英语写作学习笔记 The Thesis and Outline

A. Arriving at the thesis

Analyze the information contained in your to determine whether your hypothesis was correct. If the hypothesis was not fully supported by the evidence you gathered, write a thesis statement that reflects the full picture discovered through your research. By definition, a thesis is a statement that summarizes the central idea of the paper.

  The thesis serves at least three functions:

◇      It establishes a boundary around the subject that discourages the writer wandering aimlessly.

◇      It can chart an orderly course for the essay, making it easier to write.

◇      It gives the reader an idea of what to expect, making the paper consequently easier to read.

B. Constructing a liminary outline

A look through your note cards will probably suggest many ways to focus and organize your material. Before you begin writing, you should decide on a hypothesis and construct a liminary outline or you will flounder among the possibilities. Remain flexible, however, because you may need to revise your approach later. Writing about a subject is a way of learning about it; as you write, your understanding of the subject will deepen.

  Remember, a good outline will help both the writer and the reader. The writer who writes from an outline is less likely to stray from the point, or to commit a structural error such as overdeveloping one topic while skimping on anther. The reader, on the other hand, benefits from the outline as a complete and detailed table of contents.

1.     Focusing on a hypothesis

A thesis is a sentence asserting the main point of your essay. If you are writing on a clearly argumentative topic, such as some aspect of the problem of domestic garbage, your thesis should state your informed opinion: that it is immortal to use some developing countries as dumping grounds for domestic garbage. You should avoid writing a paper that only reports information for no apparent purpose. You need to take a stand and use sufficient evidence and analyze to support your position.

  Even if your subject is not so obviously controversial as the above, you can still assert a thesis. Nearly all subjects worth writing about contain some element of controversy. Part of your job in writing the paper is to focus on a particular element of controversy that is both meaningful and familiar enough for you to handle.

2.     Constructing a liminary outline

Before formally settling down with your detailed outline, try some different alternatives. Look through your note cards and other sources to get a feeling for the various possibilities. With your hypothesis in mind, plan a way to arrange your material in stages through a convincing argument. Instead of spaniding your subject into fixed subspanisions, take the main body of your paper as a whole to see a line of thought that moves step by step. Ask yourself the following questions: what should be sented and analyzed first? and what is the most important evidence to save for the last?

  Keep your liminary outline as simple as possible, and construct it one step at a time. Put the thesis at the top and list your major points, leaving plenty of space between each one so that you can add minor points later. You might have more than two major points supporting your thesis, but you should rarely have more than five. If your list grows too long, you are probably not making enough connections among the ideas.

  Once you decided on the thesis and the major points supporting the thesis, fill in the second level of organization by listing ideas supporting the major points. This is probably as much as you should attempt in a liminary outline, for a simple plan will be easier to adduct later as you gain new insights about your topic while writing the paper.

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