Week 4 — From Topic to Thesis: Mapping an Essay — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 4 of the term — sort thesis candidates with the two-part test, map an essay around a working thesis, plan its introduction and conclusion, check the plan with a reverse outline, and explain the move to someone outside the course.

This week you learned to state an essay's main claim in a thesis, test it for being arguable and specific, spot the impostors that only look like one, narrow a broad topic to a claim, and build the essay around it with an essay map, an introduction, a conclusion, transitions between paragraphs, and a reverse outline. Last week you built one paragraph around a controlling idea; this week you scale that claim up to the thesis that controls a whole essay. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Writing Studio practise the same moves from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together.

The task

This week you turn a topic into a thesis and build the plan for a whole essay around it. Your material is a list of illustrative sentences written for this course, attributed to no one, about campus parking, plus a working thesis and essay plan of your own. Every sentence you submit is your own writing; do not quote any real author this week, and take whichever side of your topic you can support. The course takes no side on any of these topics.

Part A — sort the candidates and map an essay. Here are six illustrative sentences that a writer drafted as possible theses for a short essay to the campus parking office:

1. "Campus parking."
2. "The main lot fills before the first class of the morning."
3. "Should the college charge less for evening parking permits?"
4. "In this essay I will discuss parking on campus."
5. "Campus parking has advantages and disadvantages."
6. "The college should sell a cheaper evening-only parking permit, because students who arrive after the day crowd leaves pay full price for spaces that sit empty."

First label every candidate as a topic, a statement of fact, a question, an announcement, the near-miss, or a thesis, and give a one-sentence reason for each label that uses the two-part test (arguable and specific). Of the 6 candidates, exactly 1 passes the two-part test; say how many you must label as a thesis impostor or the near-miss, and how you got that number. Then revise the near-miss into a thesis of your own that passes both halves; you may take either side. An essay map with 3 body points also needs 1 introduction and 1 conclusion; say how many paragraphs the full plan contains. Then build the essay plan for the thesis that passes (candidate 6, or your own revised near-miss). Write an essay map of 3 body points, one point per paragraph, in a deliberate order, and say where the counterargument will live. Add one sentence explaining why the points come in that order. Draft the introduction plan: a hook, the context a reader at the parking office needs, and the thesis as its last sentence. Write one transition sentence that leads into your counterargument paragraph and names the relationship. Write the final sentence of your conclusion so it answers the reader's "so what?" instead of repeating the thesis. Finally, reverse-outline your plan: beside each paragraph, note what it says and what job it does, and say whether the list shows any repeat or gap.

Part B — your own working thesis and map. Choose one topic: a four-day class schedule, the dining hall's hours, a community library's hours, a workplace's meeting policy, or a campus transit change. Narrow it in three labelled steps (topic, question, claim), ending on a working thesis that passes the two-part test; name your reader in one phrase. Then write a three-point essay map for it with the counterargument's place marked, and one sentence on why the order serves that reader. Run the two-part test on your own thesis in two sentences, one per half. You are planning an essay, not writing one; later weeks fill the body paragraphs with the moves you practise there.

Explain it to a non-expert

A relative who runs a small cleaning business is writing a proposal to a property manager and says, "I list everything we do and hope they pick us." Write a 3–5 sentence message that tells them, in everyday words, what your Part A work shows about the one sentence a proposal needs and about putting the reasons in an order the reader can follow. Name one honest limit of the advice — for example, that a short invoice or a friendly note may not need a thesis at all. Explain any term your relative might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a friend writing a short letter to a landlord about a broken heater that rambles through the whole winter. Model answer: "Start with one sentence that says what you want and why, like asking for the repair this week because the apartment drops below a safe temperature at night. Then give your reasons in order: what happened, how long it has gone on, and what you have already tried. The landlord should know your request before the details. If it is a two-line text, you can skip all this and ask."

Use that pattern for your relative, with your own explanation of your Part A work.

Reflect on your revision

After you revise, answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

• (a) Which change made your Part A essay plan easier for a skeptical reader to follow, and what in your reverse outline or the two-part test showed you it was needed?
• (b) Which word or phrase in your own Part B thesis changed most after feedback, and which half of the two-part test does it help the thesis pass now?

Deliverables

Submit in the assignment entry: the Part A labels with their reasons, your count of passing candidates and your paragraph count with how you got them, your revised near-miss, and your essay plan (map, introduction plan, transition, conclusion sentence, and reverse outline); your Part B narrowing, thesis, map, and two-part test; your message to your relative; and your reflection. Each part may be written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The labels, the revised near-miss, the essay plan, your own thesis and map, the message, and the reflection must be your own words. This version of the assignment asks for no chatbot at any step. Do not invent statistics or quotations; describe what you have seen yourself.

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