1. Topics: Reading Research Articles Establishing a Working Thesis

2. Aim(s): How can we learn to read research articles? How to establish a working thesis?

3. Research articles are easier than they appear.

4. Strategies to read research articles: Ask yourself the following questions/write down the answers to these questions: 1. What is the purpose of this article? 2. Does this article fit the thesis statement for your paper or the subject of your annotated bibliography? How will it be helpful to you? 3. What question or questions is the author asking? What is his or her hypothesis? A hypothesis is a proposal, or what the author plans to prove. 4. Hypotheses are not proven; the experiment might disprove what the authors have proposed. Do you agree with the hypothesis? Does the conclusion of the article and the results found support or contradict the hypothesis? 5. Do you feel persuaded by the author? Do you have any misgivings regarding the research or method that was used to obtain the results?

5. Fact: You have to read the material out there before you can establish a working thesis.

6. Working Thesis Though you may not have a final thesis when you begin to write, you should establish a tentative working thesis early on in your writing process. The word working is important here because the working thesis may well change as you write. Even so, a working thesis focuses your thinking and research, and helps keep you on track. A working thesis should have two parts: a topic, which states the topic and a comment, which makes an important point about the topic.

7. How To Write A Working Thesis Use questions to focus a broad topic – Ask questions that will break the big topic into smaller topics Consider other angles to expand a narrow topic – Too-narrow topics are rarer than topics that are too broad. – If you cannot seem to find enough information on your topic to construct an argument, your topic might be too narrow.

8. Developing The Thesis Statement At the drafting stage, try to develop your working thesis into an explicit statement, which might take the following form: In this paper/essay/research project, I plan to explain/argue/analyze/ demonstrate and so on that ________ because/if________________.

9. Common Problems To Avoid Don’t write a highly opinionated statement Don’t make an announcement Don’t make a factual statement Don’t make a broad statement