Mr. White’s History Class Writing a Research Paper – Part 1: Creating a Thesis Question/Statement

Objectives What do we want to know how to do? Explain what a thesis question and thesis statement are and what they do Explain what parts make up a good thesis question Create our own thesis question(s) for our research papers

What is a thesis statement? A thesis statement tells the reader of the paper what you’re going to try to analyze, explain, or argue

Types of Papers What types of papers are there? Analytical paper - breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience. Expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience. Argumentative - makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. (Taken from Purdue Online Writing Lab)

An Example… An example, from an excellent scholar: “An examination of the evidence leads me to the conclusion that the findings of TCNJ’s own Thomas Allsen, that ‘Mongol armies were simply better led, organized, and disciplined than those of their opponents (6)’ is right on the mark.” What is this author going to do in his paper?

Good Questions To create a good thesis statement, like the one before, we must ask good questions. What types of questions might have led to the thesis statement above?

How can we create a thesis statement? To create a thesis statement, we must develop a good question Tonight’s homework: Using the topic from your warm-up, create a big thesis question that you would like to answer with your research paper (it can change later)

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