Writing a Strong Thesis Statement

Once you’ve crafted an interesting research question, gathered your research, and written a working thesis, drafting your final thesis is just a matter of refining and narrowing.

Let’s review a couple of concepts before we get started. When you are assigned a research paper, your teacher might give you a list of topics to choose from, give you a very broad topic such as the environment, or give you no topic at all. Regardless of how specific your assignment is, the first thing you must do is narrow your topic and craft a research question. The best research questions are those that interest you. If you’re interested in your topic and really want to know the answer to your question, that will make the work of research worth the effort. If you do not know how to write a research question, please see the lesson “Generating Questions and Ideas about a Research Topic.”

Once you’ve written your research question, begin your research. As you do this, you will learn enough about your topic to write your working thesis. A working thesis is a statement that you think might answer your research question. Once you’re ready to write your paper, you should refine the working thesis into a final thesis statement. Your final thesis may be very different from your original thesis once you’ve reviewed your research. That is perfectly OK; that’s why we call it a “working thesis.”

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let’s say that you are told to write a paper about the environment. After doing some brainstorming and preliminary research, you draft the following research question: “Will driving cleaner cars make a significant impact on the environment?” As you begin your research, you write a working thesis: “Driving cleaner cars will not significantly impact the environment.” Once you complete your research and begin to read your notes, you find that there are only one or two sources that support your working thesis. The rest of your research clearly indicates the opposite. You then write your final thesis: “Driving cleaner cars can improve the environment because they emit less carbon dioxide and use less oil and gas.”

Let’s talk about what makes a strong thesis statement.

Qualities of a strong thesis statement

1. A strong thesis is specific. Your first attempts may be too broad, like this one: “There are many ways that human activity has contributed to global warming.” A 10-page research paper will hardly scratch the surface of this thesis. Entire books have been written trying to prove this claim. Here’s an example that’s better: “Changing the way we eat by buying locally grown fruits and vegetables and pasture-raised, locally produced meat will help the environment by cutting carbon emissions and protecting our water sources." This sentence focuses on one specific aspect of how human activity impacts the environment.
   
2. A strong thesis statement takes a stand. You want to make an assertion, not simply summarize information. The thesis sentence above about eating differently says that we need to change the way we get our food because our current way harms the environment.
   
3. A strong thesis is manageable. It focuses on a particular aspect of the larger subject. If I used the thesis from above about eating, I could sufficiently address the topic in a short research paper. The more specific a thesis is, the more likely it will be manageable.
   
4. A strong thesis statement avoids making an obvious claim. For example, few people will disagree with the statement “Watching violence on television is not good for children.” The studies are widely known. A better sentence is “Laws curbing violence on television should be enacted because exposure to violence causes children to become numb to violence and use violence as a problem-solving tool.”
   
5. A strong thesis statement is concise. This means you cut out all unnecessary words. You should never write, “In this paper, I will show . . . ” or anything similar—it’s implied!

Now let’s do a short activity to review what we’ve learned about thesis statements. Click on the word “Yes” if the statement is correct and “No” if the statement is not.

In the next section, you’ll learn how to refine your thesis.