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 point 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 gonna 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 colon
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
following four characteristics and then you put a colon and then you list the points after that
you