Week 4 — Thesis & Essay Structure

Welcome to your Week 4 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A shop steward asking for a schedule change, a biology student writing a lab report, and a volunteer pitching a neighborhood program all need one claim a reader could dispute.

In plain language

Every essay needs one sentence that tells the reader what the whole thing is trying to prove. That sentence is the thesis (the sentence that states the essay's main claim). This week you learn to test a thesis, to tell it apart from sentences that only look like one, and to shrink a big subject down to a claim a short essay can support. Then you learn to build the essay around it: an essay map (a short plan of the points the body will make, in order), an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion that adds things up instead of repeating. You practice all of it on the running draft about phones in lecture classes.

• Already covered: Week 1 gave you the five questions and revision; Week 2 split a text's topic from its claim; Week 3 built one paragraph around a controlling idea.
• This week: the thesis and the working thesis, the two-part test, the impostors, narrowing, the essay map, the essay's shape, and the reverse outline.
• How they connect: a thesis does for a whole essay what a topic sentence does for one paragraph.
• Where we're going next: Week 5, Narrative & Expository Writing, puts this essay shape to work in the first major essay.

Focus

What is my point, stated as a claim someone could argue with, and in what order will I prove it?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] write a working thesis that is arguable and specific
• [ ] tell a thesis from a topic, a fact, a question, or an announcement
• [ ] narrow a broad topic to a claim and map its body points in a deliberate order
• [ ] plan an introduction and a conclusion that answers "so what?"
• [ ] check a draft's structure with a reverse outline

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 4 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Writing Studio (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

Checkpoint: turn the running draft's topic into a working thesis that passes the two-part test, and map it to three points.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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