1. For Academic Writing in English
Thesis Statements
For Academic Writing in English

2. What is a thesis statement?
A thesis statement is a key sentence of any paper that tells the reader what the author’s idea is and how the author will prove the idea correct.
A thesis is a lens for the reader to view the paper from.

3. Where’s my thesis?
Your thesis should go at or very near the last sentence or two of your introduction.
Your thesis is the narrowest, most specific part of your introduction when you are writing with an inverted pyramid style introduction.

4. What’s in my thesis? Your thesis includes 4 parts: Your subject
Your purpose verb
Your direct object
Your clauses
Our sample thesis for the next few slides will be:
Lilies are the best flowers because they have vibrant color, pleasant aroma, and symbolic meaning.

5. What’s in my thesis?
Your subject is what you are writing about, what you are making an argument about.
In our sentence, our subject is “Lilies.”
Your purpose verb is the base for what you’re writing about.
In our sentence, our purpose verb is one of the most common purpose verbs, “are.”

6. What’s in my thesis?
Your direct object is what you are using your purpose verb to say about your topic.
In our sentence, the direct object is “the best flowers.”
Your clauses are your reasons why you are correct.
In our sentence, we have three clauses.

7. Thesis Proofs
Remember the clauses are your proofs. They need to be clear and logical. You will elaborate on these in the body of your paper.
Our three clauses are:
“vibrant color”
“pleasant aroma”
“symbolic meaning”
In your body, you would show evidence of each of these.

8. Geometric Writing (no, it’s not math!)
When you can, make your proofs parallel. What this means is making each clause grammatically equal.
Our three are parallel because each proof is a noun phrase consisting of one adjective and one common, singular noun:
“vibrant color”
“pleasant aroma”
“symbolic meaning”

9. Now, it’s your turn!