[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, everyone, I'm MacKenzie, and today, we're learning about introduction to thesis support. Have you ever thought about the difference between an opinion and a fact? In this tutorial, we'll learn about the definition of a thesis, we'll discuss idea development, we'll talk about main ideas and claims, we'll learn about evidence and support, and we'll take a look at examples of thesis support.
We'll begin by discussing the definition of a thesis. When I say thesis, what I'm talking about is one single, clear, concise statement that expresses the controlling idea of a piece of writing, and the controlling idea of a piece of writing is the core idea or main point that's driving the writing itself. It influences the goals of the writing and the structure of the writing.
The essay has its own core controlling idea, and each paragraph has its own controlling idea as well. The thesis is really important to the writing because it anchors or guides the way that the writing is written. It helps the writer to figure out what to say in the writing, and it helps the reader to figure out how to understand the writing.
The important thing to understand about a thesis is that it's different from the topic of the paper. The thesis will include the topic of the paper, but topics tend to be rather broad, whereas thesis statements are very specific. The topic of the paper is broad enough that it could be discussed in a variety of different ways, whereas the thesis statement is specific enough that it only says one specific idea. Here are some examples.
Example number one is the thesis statement that tells us that the topic of this essay is that animals are life-savers. The topic is rather broad. There's a lot we could say about animals being life-savers.
So the thesis, then, has to give us more specific details about what is going to be discussed related to the topic. We find out that we're going to discuss their companionship, intuitive nature, and assistance during emergencies. Those are the specific controlling ideas related to the topic of animals being life-savers. Example number two is a thesis statement that tells us that the topic of this essay is the age at which college students begin college. There is a lot we could say about that topic, and the thesis gives us more specific details about what is going to be said about the topic.
And example number three is a thesis statement that tells us that the topic of this essay is manners. The thesis then gives us more specific details about the topic of manners, what will be discussed related to the topic. This paper is going to address the societal concerns related to the decrease in manners and emphasis on improving manners. That's what is specifically going to be addressed regarding the topic of the essay.
Once we have used the topic of our essay to develop a strong thesis statement, we then need to support the thesis statement with effective development of ideas. Development is the process of articulating or explaining our ideas and supporting them with evidence and reasoning. This means that we're creating claims or main points for the thesis, and we're supporting them effectively. Development can refer to our development of the ideas within the essay as a whole, or paragraph development in which we develop each paragraph individually and relate it all back to the thesis.
I had just mentioned that when we develop our ideas, we're going to end up with main ideas and claims. Main ideas refers to the primary points being made within an essay and their organization within the essay. Main points help to support the thesis statement.
Claims, on the other hand, are a little different. Claims are assertions made by the writer. They're a type of main point that makes a statement, and therefore, need to be supported and defended by the author.
Claims are very common in argumentative writing. Think of a thesis statement as an example of a primary type of claim. The thesis is making a statement, and it's defended by support and evidence within the essay.
It's important to understand that the main idea is sort of like the controlling idea of a paragraph. It may include a claim within the paragraph. The controlling idea is one core idea that's being expressed. We could express the main idea, the controlling idea, in one paragraph, or several paragraphs, it really depends on what we're trying to say in the writing and in the claim.
We just learned that when we have main ideas and claims, they will need to include evidence and support. Evidence refers to the proof of the validity of a claim, and this is done so using information such as facts, data, personal research results, citations from other people's research, and our own personal experience. Support includes evidence, logic, and other writing techniques, such as clarification and expansion of ideas, to help to justify a claim.
Support is a rather broad term, and evidence is one type of support. The purpose of support is to help us to fully explain and defend our main ideas or our claims. Keep in mind that when we have an essay, we have a thesis that tells us what specifically the essay is about, and that thesis needs to be supported using evidence.
We're also going to have paragraphs that all relate to the thesis. Each paragraph is going to have a topic sentence that tells us what the main point or claim is of that particular paragraph, and we're going to use evidence and support to explain the topic of that paragraph. Think of each paragraph as a miniature essay. The topic sentence is like a thesis, and we're using support to defend it, just like we would an essay overall.
We are now going to look at paragraphs from three different essays. We will identify the topic sentence of the paragraph, and we'll look for the evidence or support within the paragraph. In this example, the topic sentence is the first sentence of the paragraph, and it tells us that the main point or claim being made in this paragraph is that Americans perceive senior citizens to be poor drivers.
Now, we look for evidence or support to prove that that is true. The author has included a statistic. 73% of respondents agree that driving skills and behaviors of senior drivers can be concerning.
That statistic is an example of evidence. The last sentence of the paragraph includes an example of logic as support, stating that the above mentioned statistic demonstrates the need for legal policy regarding this problem. It's tying the ideas together in explaining why they're important.
In our second example, the topic sentence is actually the second sentence of the paragraph. It tells us that the focus or main point of this paragraph is that Americans perceive that manners have gotten worse in recent years. The rest of the paragraph offers evidence to support that idea, such as the statistic that 79% of people believe that individuals are ruder to each other, and that 42% of people encounter rude behavior daily. The paragraph then includes an example of logic by stating that, because this information is more than 12 years old, the problem has likely worsened since then.
Our last example is an example of an introduction. The introduction states our primary claim, which is our thesis statement. The thesis statement is that due to their companionship, intuitive nature, and assistance during emergencies, pets fit the definition of life-savers.
Because of this thesis, we know that the controlling idea is that pets are life-savers, and we know that the main ideas related to that are companionship, intuitive nature, and assistance during emergencies. That helps us to figure out what kind of evidence and support may be included in this essay. Perhaps we use data about the health benefits of owning a pet, perhaps we cite research from others who have investigated this topic, perhaps we include anecdotes or personal experience.
In this tutorial, we learned about the definition of a thesis, and we discussed idea development, main ideas and claims, and evidence and support, and we took a look at examples of thesis support. Facts are different from opinions. I'm MacKenzie. Thanks for listening.