A practical introduction to thesis statement.

1. English forAcademic
Purposes
THESIS STATEMENT / MAIN IDEAS
by Herbert Buhod Stephen Naidi

2. THESISSTATEMENT
INTRODUCTION

3. What is it?
 Thesis Statement is the main point or the controlling
idea of the entire essay.
 Just as you have a controlling idea for a paragraph, a
thesis statement covers the entire essay.
 The purpose of a thesis statement is:
- to organize
- to predict
- to control
- to define
… the entire essay

4. Visual Diagram
Title
(Topic)
Controlling
Idea 1
Controlling
Idea 2
Conclusion
Controlling
Idea 3
Thesis

5. GoodThesis
Statement
 It must be a complete statement of fact or argument
about the topic.
 It should be general enough that you can talk about it
more (via your paragraph main ideas/controlling idea).
 It answers the question “so what”?
 When you look back at your main ideas, it should be
explaining or answering the thesis statement.

6. How to start?
 When you begin an essay, you should have a topic;
from there, you need to ask yourself: What about that
topic that interests you?
 Write the thesis statement in a complete sentence.
 It works like a topic sentence but the coverage is bigger
(imagine writing a topic sentence but for the whole
essay).
 A thesis statement is typically at the end of the
Introduction paragraph (for visibility but you can write
it anywhere within the Introduction).

7. How to start? –
part 2
 After you are done with the thesis statement, your 2nd
paragraph (where the 1st main idea begins) is where
you start to explain your thesis statement.
 After you have a thesis statement, you will develop
several points to support your thesis statement.
 These points are what you call your main ideas and
they are organized in multiple paragraphs.

8. How to start
thinking about
thesis
statement?
 You can always begin with the W-H questions.
 Ask questions about the topic that you propose.
 Inspire yourself to ask questions based on your
curiosity or what you have discovered recently about
that topic.

9. THESISSTATEMENT /
MAIN IDEAS
THE PROCESS

10. Igniting the
Spark for the
Thesis
Statement
 Let’s say we start by thinking about the topic of movie.
 Imagine the last movie you watched for example: Joker
(2019).
 You remember finding out about the movie in some
articles some time ago that there were many bad
reviews about the movie.
 In those reviews they discussed about the movie being:
too real, too violent, too serious, too dark, very real,
has underlying messages, has social commentaries,
was relevant to current issues.
 Next, you have two options in this scenario: you agree
or you disagree with those opinions.

11. Igniting the
Spark for the
Thesis
Statement –
part 2
 The next step is to put your agreement or
disagreement into a thought-statement (in your head).
 Write down a few statements to show that you agree
or disagree.
 The statements do not necessarily have to be about
agreeing or disagreeing.
 It can also be about explaining (answering the WHY
question instead).

12. Igniting the
Spark for the
Thesis
Statement –
part 3
 Sometimes, you might not want to put your personal
perspective, rather you want to quote other people’s
opinions about the movie in general.
 This all depends on the type of essay you want to
produce.
 The statement will be the basis of your arguments for
the essay.
 For the purpose of this demo, let’s stick to agree and
disagree.

13. Igniting the
Spark for the
Thesis
Statement –
part 4
 The next step is to put your agreement or
disagreement into a thought-statement (in your
head).
 Write down a few statements on paper to show that
you agree or disagree (depending on your general
stand).
 The statement will be the basis of your arguments for
the essay.

14. Igniting the
Spark for the
Thesis
Statement –
part 5
 Some of the statements might look like one of these:
-The film gives the character a sense of realism and in
my opinion it gives a fresh angle to the character.
- The film is ruining the character by making it seem real
because Joker is supposed to be funny.
- The realism in the movie gives a lot of positive
underlying messages to the viewers.
-The film is displaying too many negative scenes and it
could affect the minds of the younger audience.

15. Igniting the
Spark for the
Thesis
Statement –
part 6
 Let’s go back to the part of the scenario where you
“read a few articles about the movie”.
 You found out that people say the movie was: too real,
too violent, too serious, too dark, very real, has
underlying messages, has social commentaries, was
relevant to current issues.
 There are two ways to use these points: 1) use them as
to support the thesis statement 2) use them to reject
the thesis statement
 You will turn these points into main ideas that will help
you develop the rest of the essay.

16. THESISSTATEMENT /
MAIN IDEAS
THE PROCESS: MIX AND MATCH

17. PuttingThem
Together
 At this point you have: 1) thesis statement 2) main
ideas
 Now it’s time to select what you need.

18. PuttingThem
Together - 2
 THESIS STATEMENTS
-The film gives the character a sense of realism and in
my opinion it gives a fresh angle to the character.
- The film is ruining the character by making it seem real
because Joker is supposed to be funny.
- The realism in the movie gives a lot of positive
underlying messages to the viewers.
- The film is displaying too many negative scenes and it
could affect the minds of the younger audience.

19. PuttingThem
Together - 3
 THESIS STATEMENT: The realism in the movie gives a
lot of positive underlying messages to the viewers.
 For this demo, we will use the third statement (in bold)
as our thesis statement.This means that we agree the
movie gives a lot of positive underlying messages.
 Let’s look at the main idea choices.

20. PuttingThem
Together - 4
 THESIS STATEMENT: The realism in the movie gives a
lot of positive underlying messages to the viewers.
 MAIN IDEAS (not final): too real, too violent, too
serious, too dark, very real, has underlying messages,
has social commentaries, was relevant to current issues
 When choosing your main ideas, you can use the exact
words that you have written down or change it a bit
from this point.
 Take the necessary key-words.

21. PuttingThem
Together - 5
 THESIS STATEMENT: The realism in the movie gives a
lot of positive underlying messages to the viewers.
 MAIN IDEAS (final): too real, too violent, too serious,
too dark, very real, has underlying messages, has social
commentaries, was relevant to current issues
 The underlined keywords are the possible choices that
we want for our thesis statement.
 Since our thesis statement says that the movie gives
positive underlying messages, we need to give support
to this statement.

22. PuttingThem
Together - 5
 The final outcome will look like this…
 THESIS STATEMENT:
The realism in the movie gives a lot of positive
underlying messages to the viewers.
 MAIN IDEAS:
i) real
ii) underlying messages
iii) social commentaries
iv) relevant to current issues

23. What’s the
Title?
 From the example shown, the purpose of the essay is
to present positive views about the movie.
 The title should reflect this view.
 ExampleTitle 1: 2019 Joker is the best Joker film
 ExampleTitle 2: 2019 Joker – A Social Commentary
Film
 ExampleTitle 3: Realistic Joker – an Important Change
 ExampleTitle 4: Jokers of Our Society
 ExampleTitle 5: Joker – An anti-hero

24. TRY ITYOURSELF
EXERCISE

25. Exercise 1
 Think of a topic or a subject
 Write down a thesis statement about the topic (What
is your opinion or stand about the topic?)
 Write down the main ideas related to the topic (How
do you plan to support your thesis statement?)
 Write something like this