Hi everyone! Welcome back to my channel Learn
Academic English where I teach intermediate and advanced level lessons for English learners
who want to take their English to the next level. In today's video, I'm going to be sharing
my experience teaching writing with you, and I'm going to show you the best ways to write a
thesis statement. This is a great video if you are in school or even if you have a job where you have
to make presentations because the English style is very direct, and the thesis statement is the most
important part of the writing because that's the sentence where we directly state our idea. If you
are writing in English, you want to know how to write good thesis statements so that your writing
is clear and to save you time, so if a thesis statement is easy for you, then it's going to save
you time because you're going to be able to do it and then focus on the rest of your writing. If
you're learning writing to prepare for a test like the TOEFL or ielts, this is also extremely
useful. So before we get into the lesson today, I'd like to remind you to please give this video a
like if you find it helpful, leave a comment below where you can ask questions or practice with
me, and subscribe if you want more lessons like this one, and be sure to check out my writing
playlist where you can see lots more lessons all about writing in English, and be sure to stay
until the end of the video when we'll practice writing a thesis statement together! So first, what
is a thesis statement? Well, a thesis statement is one ,sometimes two, sentences that directly tell
the main idea of your writing or your presentation. We say that this is the most important sentence
in your essay because it tells the reader exactly what your argument or main idea is and maybe how
you're going to explain that in your essay. So it works like a map or a guide for your reader, and in
the English writing style, we expect this sentence. It tells the reader exactly what your argument
is what is your main idea and maybe how are you going to explain that, and then the reader
feels more comfortable; they know what to expect, and then they will read your essay and decide
if they find your argument persuasive believable or not. And all of the paragraphs in the essay
serve some kind of purpose to support this thesis statement. Usually the thesis statement goes at the
end of the introduction paragraph. In longer essays sometimes your introduction can be two or more
paragraphs; in that case it'll usually go at the end of the last introductory paragraph, so it's
usually the last sentence of your introduction. Let's look at an example thesis statement: Cats
make the best pets for the following reasons: they are easy to take care of, they provide
company, and they live a long life. So in this thesis statement we know what the writer is
talking about about, cats, and what idea does the writer want to prove? That they make the best pets.
How is the writer going to explain that argument? With three main reasons: they're easy to take care
of, they provide company, and they live a long life. So in this thesis statement we have those three
parts clearly mapped out for us: What's the topic? Cats. What does the writer want to say about cats?
That they make the best pets. How is the writer going to explain that? With three reasons, and
here we even know what those three reasons are. So we expect that the essay is going to have
three parts, one part to explain each reason. Probably each part is going to be one paragraph,
but it could be more. For example, for the first supporting reason that they are easy to take
care of, it's possible that the writer might even have two or three paragraphs to explain
that idea. Maybe that writer has more detail to share about that idea and that's okay, but we know
that the essay is going to have three main parts to explain each of those reasons. When we talk
about writing, we often talk about the controlling idea. When we are writing, we usually choose a
general topic, in this case the topic was cats, and then we brainstormed, so we get some ideas down on
paper, and we think, "What can I say about cats?" Well, maybe I could talk about different types of cats, I
could talk about the differences between wild cats and domestic cats, maybe I could talk about how to
take care of a cat, or maybe I could talk about the reasons that I think they make the best pets. So
as you can see, when we have the topic we have many different ways that we can explore this topic, we
have many different controlling ideas. Now when we write an essay, we're going to choose one of those
controlling ideas to argue. The controlling idea is the idea that you want your reader to learn when
they read your essay, and as we will see later, those supporting reasons that I gave in my thesis
statement are optional, but we'll talk about that more in just a minute. So now, let's move on to look
at some example thesis statements, and by looking at good examples, it gives you a better idea about
how to write a good thesis statement yourself. We're going to look at a topic and we're going
to consider the different things that you should think about when you're planning your essay, so
we'll think about the topic, and then we'll think about the controlling idea (what do we want to say
about that topic?), and then we're going to make a question. And this is my advice for the best way to
write a thesis statement: to start with a question because the question helps you focus your idea,
and then when you answer the question, that's going to be your thesis statement. And if you want
to know more about these questions, check out my video about research questions. So let's take a
look at the topic of being a vegetarian. Maybe I'm taking a nutrition class and my professor asked
me to write an essay about being a vegetarian, so what could I say about being a vegetarian?
Well, there are many different things i could talk about, but I decided that I want to talk about
why people become a vegetarian because I'm curious, why do people choose to be a vegetarian? That's
my controlling idea, and we can make that into our research question, Why do people become vegetarians?
or Why do people choose to be a vegetarian? So let's answer that question: Why do people become
vegetarians? Well, I could do a little research or I could ask people interview people, and I could find
out the reasons, so I found out that one reason is that it's for ethical reasons. They don't believe
in eating animals. Another reason is for health. The way that animals are raised for meat produces bad
things for the environment. Now that we know what our topic is, our controlling idea, and how we're
going to explain that controlling idea, we can make this into a thesis statement, and we can say,
People become vegetarians for three main reasons: improved health, ethical issues. and environmental
concerns. So think about the question, why do people become vegetarians? Do we answer the question?
Yes we do. Next, the topic is Buddhist art from Japan, and when I did a little research, I found
out that there are some characteristics of this art, so I could ask a question like, What are the
common characteristics of Buddhist art from Japan? And I could make a thesis statement like
this: Buddhist art from Japan has four main characteristics: simplicity, emptiness,
directness, and a connection to nature. And as we'll see in a moment, we can leave out
those supporting points and make a shorter thesis statement, and that would be okay, too. All right,
next one. The topic is cardiovascular disease or heart disease, and for this one I want to
talk about how to prevent cardiovascular disease. There are other controlling ideas I could
explore; I could talk about how to treat it or how to recognize it, but I want
to talk about how to prevent it, so I could ask, How can cardiovascular disease be
prevented? And my answer is that you can exercise, have a healthy diet, and avoid smoking, so
let's make that into a thesis statement: The three main ways to prevent cardiovascular
disease are to have a healthy diet, exercise, and avoid smoking. So now that we've
seen a few examples and you know how to do a research question and then connect that
research question to your thesis statement, let's look at two types of thesis statements:
general and specific. A general thesis statement does not include the supporting points
that you're going to discuss in your essay. That..for that reason, a general thesis statement
is shorter and easier to write. So remember our example that we talked about the main ways
to prevent heart disease or cardiovascular disease? So for example, we can say, The three
main ways to prevent cardiovascular disease are to exercise, have a healthy diet, and avoid
smoking. In this example, the supporting points are those three ideas that come at the end of
the thesis statement, and that shows the reader what you're going to talk about in your essay, but
a general thesis statement is going to leave those out, and it could be something like, There are
three main ways to prevent cardiovascular disease. So this tells the reader what that the topic is,
cardiovascular disease, that the writer is going to explain, how to prevent it, and we even gave a hint
that there are going to be three ways, but we don't know exactly what those three ways, are and that's
okay. We're gonna find out when we read the essay. All right, let's look at another example
that we did before: Traditional Buddhist art has four main characteristics: simplicity,
emptiness, directness, and a connection to nature. Well, this thesis statement is very clear because
we know what is the topic, the topic is traditional Buddhist art from Japan; we know what the writer
is going to talk about, that it has four main characteristics; and we even know what those
characteristics are, so we know exactly what the essay is going to talk about. We even know the
order that the writer is going to discuss them. The writer is going to discuss simplicity first, but
we can take those supporting points out and make a more general thesis statement: Traditional Buddhist
art from Japan has four main characteristics. So that's the difference between a general thesis
statement and what's called a specific thesis statement. A specific thesis statement is going to
include the supporting points in the same order that the writer is going to discuss them in the
essay. Let's look at another example so you can see which one you prefer, a general thesis statement
or a specific thesis statement. The topic for this essay is hybrid cars, so we might ask ourselves,
Well, what do we want to talk about with hybrid cars? Well there are a lot of different things
I could talk about, but I want to talk about why people should drive them, reasons that people
should drive hybrid cars, so my question is, Why should people drive hybrid cars? And I could make
a thesis statement with my topic, hybrid cars, and my controlling idea, that everyone should
drive one: Everyone should drive a hybrid car, or Everyone should drive a hybrid car for three
main reasons. Okay so that's a general thesis statement. We don't know exactly what the reasons
are and that's okay because we will find out in the essay. What about a specific thesis statement?
How could we write the thesis statement with the supporting points? Well, first we have to brainstorm,
what are the ideas that we're going to discuss? So we might want to say that they pollute
less, that they are widely available, and they reduce gasoline expenses. Okay, so
those are three good reasons, so let's make a specific thesis statement: Everyone should
drive a hybrid car for three main reasons: they are widely available, they pollute
less, and they reduce gasoline expenses. Now notice with those supporting
points that we also could leave out some of those words. We could say,
they are widely available, pollute less, and reduce gasoline expenses. We don't have to
repeat they every time. Also notice that those supporting points show us the order that the
writer is going to discuss them in the essay, so both of these thesis statements are acceptable
in academic writing. Which one do you prefer? So I'm going to tell you that I prefer the specific
thesis statement because I think that giving a more detailed map helps the writer to stay
focused and makes it more clear for the reader, but if you are short on time or if you have
difficulty writing a specific thesis statement, then a general thesis statement is acceptable too.
So before we go, let's do a quick practice writing a thesis statement together. The topic for this one
is climate change. It's a very hot topic nowadays, and so let's think about different controlling
ideas. What could we talk about with climate change? Well, we could talk about reasons that it is
getting worse; we could talk about how countries can prevent climate change, or solutions; we could
talk about how climate change has happened, so that would be like a kind of history or a process
that would explain it from the beginning until now; maybe we want to talk about some of
the problems that climate change is causing, so here in California where I live, climate
change is causing really bad fires every year, so that would be interesting. Okay, so let's
go ahead and choose that last one to do for our example, and let's think about problems that
climate change is causing. So again, our topic is climate change, controlling idea is problems that
it is causing, so let's brainstorm some of those. So I'm going to say that it causes more wildfires.
Um I know that this year in a lot of places it's been extremely hot and that's something we
see more often, so we could say more extreme heat stronger tropical storms, so stronger
hurricanes and other big storms, and something that I read about recently was how
climate change is causing species loss, meaning a reduced number of different species of
animals and insects in the world. Okay so we have four different problems that climate
change is causing that we can discuss in our essay. Okay let's make the question to
help us: What problems is climate change causing? Okay and then let's answer it: Climate change is
causing four main problems. Okay that's a general thesis statement. How can we make a specific thesis
statement with these ideas that we came up with? Climate change is causing the following four main
problems. My final tip for the best way to write thesis statements is to use a colon to separate
the thesis statement into two parts, and this is when you're doing a specific thesis statement
that includes the supporting points. For example, Everyone should drive a hybrid car
for the following reasons: they pollute less, are widely available, and
reduce gasoline expenses. Could we do that without the supporting points too? We could, but if
you're going to include the supporting points, try using that formula of putting the following
reasons or the following problems. or the
