Thesis Statement

The thesis is the most important sentence of your essay. It tells the reader what your argument is, and why. It should give the reader an idea about what the rest of the essay will be about.

For a five-paragraph essay, here is one good formula for a thesis:

1 sentence with 3 parts: Claim, Reasoning and Occasion.

Steps to creating your thesis:

1. Make a claim - your claim is your opinion or argument - what is your idea, specifically?

2. Support your claim with 3 reasons. 3 facts to explain why your claim is correct. (If you are writing an essay about a book, these supports need to be from the text.) Usually, before the support, you’ll see words about cause, like because/by/through.

3. Add an occasion - it sets the stage for the argument, explaining to the reader what the issue is or showing the reader why he or she should be interested in the argument. It usually starts with a word like Despite/If/While/In/When. The occasion comes first, but we write it last, because we have to know what the claim and support are going to be before we can write a really good occasion.

 

EXAMPLES of theses in this format:

This format and the following examples were taken from the Breakthrough Cambridge writing curriculum.