CoachKudu1939
In short, an argumentative thesis statement is one that takes a…
In short, an argumentative thesis statement is one that takes a stand on a topic, and an argumentative essay is one that supports such a thesis with evidence and analysis.
For this essay, the goal is to do an argumentative thesis statement in response to the essay topic and to support that thesis with evidence from The Distance Between Us and analysis of that evidence. The peer-reviewed articles that you put on the annotated bibliography should be used to supplement your analysis of the book. But the focus of the essay should be on the book itself. See the “Essays: Info and Samples” page for more details.
Sentence Frames for Argumentative Thesis Statements
A major part of the essay is the thesis. Keep in mind that you should only write a thesis after you have settled on events from the book to do about and found peer-reviewed articles to include in your essay. The reason for this is that you need to think about what you will say in your essay before you can sum it up in the thesis statement. Again, see the various resources that I mentioned above for more details.
Below are two sentence frames that could be used to write argumentative thesis statements for this essay assignment. Notice that each is one to two sentences long. If these thesis statements were on an essay, they would be at the end of the introduction.
The thesis statements that can be written with these frames would be argumentative because they would offer an opinion about the book that would need to be supported with evidence and analysis. Each frame focuses on causes and effects of issues presented in the book. This is the best way to approach this assignment. Think about the causes and effects of the issues that Grande and her family faced. And remember that the focus should be on one of the questions listed on Discussion #1.
In her book, Grande represents how [LIST ONE OR TWO KEY CONFLICTS] created [LIST ONE OR TWO KEY EFFECTS] in her and her siblings. Grande’s representation of this conflict (or these conflicts) pushes readers to [STATE WHAT YOU THINK THE AUTHOR’S PURPOSE IS OR WHAT YOU THINK READERS SHOULD THINK ABOUT AFTER READING THE BOOK].
Grande shows readers how the [LIST THE TYPE] distance between her and her [FOCUS ON GRANDE’S MOTHER OR FATHER] led to [LIST ONE OR MORE EFFECTS]. Grande’s experience supports evidence from research that explains that [CONSIDER KEY FINDINGS IN YOUR RESEARCH].
Grande’s relationship with her [MOTHER OR FATHER] was [INSERT DESCRIPTION] because [FOCUS ON THE ACTIONS OF MOTHER OR FATHER], ultimately causing Grande to [LIST ONE OR TWO EFFECTS].
Assignment: draft thesis statement for Essay #1. You may include more than one if you like. I encourage you to use one of the sentence frames above though you do not have to. If you use one of the sentence frames, you may adjust the wording to make your idea make sense. Note that you do not have to use this thesis on your essay. This is just practice so that you can all see a variety of thesis statements on the assignment. I will comment on some of the thesis statements so that everyone can get a better sense of what I’m looking for.
Score: Your score will be based on how effective your thesis is. The goal is to write a precisely-worded argumentative thesis that responds to one of the questions on the essay prompt.
