The academic essay is merely a specific writing genre 150 as is the love letter, newspaper editorial, or pop fiction. The purpose of this discussion is to make clear to you what those rules and norms are, and how to use them to express your argument clearly. Its value as an instructional tool is to assist students in developing their critical thinking skills. As you recall, critical thinking is defined as: the ability to read theory accurately, appropriate it meaningfully, apply it independently, generate results based on that application, analyze the results, and form a clear argument based on those results that can be defended with a specific line of reasoning. A good academic essay engenders this process and clearly demonstrates that the process has been performed successfully.

Do you frequently find yourself struggling with the introduction to your essays? do you not know how to begin the essay? do you find yourself searching for a generalizing statement that will get things going, and trying to find a delicate balance between bs'ing and saying something meaningful? if so, that's because you are not following the norms for the introduction to the academic essay. Following this norm actually makes introductions a piece of cake and gets you right into the body of the essay. Here is the norm: the purpose of the introduction is two fold: 1.

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To introduce the theoretical framework that will guide your analysis 2. To introduce the thesis statement that will organize your paper. following this norm allows you to cut to the chase. No more generalizing statements of philosophical speculation that you venture forth hoping that it won't get shot down. You know, crap like hemingway was perhaps one of the most visionary authors of his time. Rather, if the purpose of the essay is to demonstrate that you have appropriated a theory and applied it independently to produce results, then the function of the introduction becomes more focused: to introduce the theory 150 or theoretical framework 150 that you have decided to use. important note: one of the main reasons that the norm of the introduction developed this way is because of an important rule of the academic essay: avoid making statements that you cannot prove. the problem with the generalizing/philosophical/bs'ing statements like hemingway. Moreover, to even try and do so would require voluminous amounts of discourse for something that is not even your thesis: what you actually are setting out to prove.

It still meets an introduction's purpose of orienting the reader, it just does so in a very specific manner. Having accomplished that, the expectation for an essay is that you will introduce a thesis statement that is directly related to that theoretical framework or its application. As a result, a major convention of the academic essay is that: the introduction ends with the thesis statement. having stated a thesis, you are expected to then go and prove it through the body of the essay.

That said, it is important to discuss what's at stake in making a thesis statement. There are four basic logical forms for a thesis statement: 149 a banal thesis statement 149 a simple thesis statement 149 a complex thesis statement 149 an impossible thesis statement let's discuss each of these quickly before moving on. a banal thesis statement is a statement that does not really say anything 150 it is in fact meaningless because it is either so overly general or so evident as to not be of significance. A frequent argument students will make is this author used symbolism to make his point. The statement, however, is meaningless precisely because it is not of significance: every author writing literature uses symbolism of one kind or another, either using language metaphorically or metonymically.

Thus, to attempt to single out or make a distinction of a piece for using symbolism is to not say anything that even needs proving to begin with. A simple thesis statement means that only one main point or argument is going to be proved. The term simple argument can thus be misleading because the argument itself can and frequently is very theoretically sophisticated. What makes them simple is that in terms of their logical structure, they only take on one line of proof, and hence, their organization of proof will be simple. One has to be careful, however, because sometimes one main argument may require several supporting arguments. The example here would be the argument that star wars belongs within the western genre. Here the writer has only one thing to prove, but in order to do so will have to establish the elements that comprise the western genre and demonstrate how the film embodies them not a small task.

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Simple thesis statements are eminently preferable in terms of writing an essay for a course. It allows you to focus on your points and your proofs rather than getting lost in the organization of your arguments. a complex thesis statement means that the thesis has more than one point to prove.

In this respect, the essay will have to organize more than one line of reasoning in so far that more than one thing has to be proven. Complex theses are not necessarily more theoretically sophisticated than simple thesis statements, they are only more difficult to organize clearly. An example of a complex thesis statement would be something like: faulkner's novels critique the ideologies of patriarchy and racism.

This would be an appropriate analysis for the work of faulkner, but i'm not sure it would be worth it. To begin with, it is not clear what the writer has to gain in terms of proving both of these aspects of the work rather than just the one. Instead, with this complex thesis, there are going to be long sections of the essay where half of what needs to be proved will be left suspended while the other half gets discussed.

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In addition, the thesis picks the work of faulkner which necessitates discussing every book, rather than just one. Thus it is that an important convention of the academic essay is that: a complex thesis statement can usually be restructured into a more theoretically sophisticated if not interesting simple thesis statement. the impossible thesis statement is a kind of corollary of the banal thesis statement insofar as you want to stay away from it. Rather than saying something which is evident or meaningless, however, the impossible thesis statement puts forward something which cannot reasonably be proved, as a result of there being no agreed upon or stable criteria from which to render conclusions. Examples of impossible statements abound, but the one most related to this course would be the plague is great art, or the plague is the most realistic of all camus' novels.

What distinguishes between good art and great art? furthermore, the essay would not be able to point to a stable definition of art , a concept that art historians, artists, and cultural critics have been arguing over for centuries. The latter thesis has a similar problem since realistic is not a stable concept with firm criteria. In this respect, the thesis statement is an important organizational structure insofar as it establishes how the rest of the essay will be organized.

Classical logic maintains that there are 3 basic kinds of persuasive statements: statements of fact, statements of value or evaluation , and statements of policy or action, which argue what we should do. Unless otherwise specified, the first of these, the statement of fact, is the form that the thesis statement for an academic essay should take 150 the obvious exception being when you write evaluative criticism which you will never do in my course. Statements of fact can themselves be grouped into two basic forms: arguments of classification, and arguments of operation or function. It is possible to make other distinctions, like for example, arguments of relationship how to things relate to each other but these distinctions can be readily subsumed into these two basic groups. Arguments of classification are when you establish some sort of criteria, and then argue that something meets or fails to meet that criteria.

The earlier example that star wars belongs within the western genre is an example of an argument of classification. Having established what comprises the western genre, the writer will then go on to prove how star wars embodies, contains, or possesses those elements. Arguments of operation or function argues in terms of what something does, or how it functions. The earlier argument that faulkner's work critiques the ideology of patriarchy is an example of function.