How To Write An Essay

How To Write An Essay

What Is A Thesis?

Introduction

• A thesis is the position that you will be taking in your paper.
• This mean what you will attempt to argue/prove in your paper.
• Your thesis has to include what you are going to be discussing in your paper. Topics.
• This should be done by using evidence and facts to backup what you are saying.
• This needs be done with primary sources and with what other historians have said (secondary sources.)

SAMPLE THESIS

• First sentence can be a quote. You should not pose a question in the first sentence. This is also called a topic sentence.
• The second and third sentences should explain the quote (if you choose to use one.) Second sentence should summarize the quote and third sentence addresses how the quote relates to main topics of paper.
• Your thesis sentence(s) should be the fourth sentence in the paragraph. What is a thesis?
• Your fifth sentence needs to explains why your thesis/argument is necessary to understanding your main topics and points.
• Finally, your sixth sentence should ask a questions pertaining to your argument.

Thesis Examples

• I argue that the United States failed at bringing equality to all its groups because it excluded Native Americans (Topic 1), Women (Topic 2), and African Americans (Topic 3) from full citizenship.

• Progressive reformers in El Paso worked to promote health and sanitation within the community by providing practical assistance to ethnic Mexican mothers and children in the form of educational classes, health services, and day care.
• Furthermore, ensuring that the Mexicans and Mexican Americans of the Southside understood the practice of hygienically caring for themselves and their families safeguarded Euro-American families who utilized the services and labor of ethnic Mexicans.
• The objective was to ensure the creation of a stable working class community entrenched in the values of United States society; further the goal of the Woman’ s Charity Association, the Sunshine Society, and the Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement House was to produce model U.S. citizens while maintaining the existing racial hierarchy.
• For these organizations and charities, El Paso’ s Mexican Quarter reflected the larger problems that the nation faced; further, they believed that they could eradicate society’ s problems—immigrants, “foreign” residents, overpopulation, infant mortality, diseases, and Catholicism—if they provided the proper instruction.

Conclusion

SAMPLE CONCLUSION

• Reword your introduction as your conclusion without using your quotes. This needs to be in your own words.
• First sentence is your thesis. [Example: I argued in this paper that…….]
• Second, third, and fourth sentences should restate your topic sentences. In addition to summarizing your work.
• The fifth and sixth sentences should answer your thesis, and questions.
• Most importantly you need to answer why these topics are essential to understanding your thesis.

• These concepts and ideas are not as far back in the past as one might think. Prekindergarten that teaches English to three year olds maintain the Sunshine Society’s work on teaching English to the children of “anxious mothers.”
• In cities like El Paso, home economics and vocational training begins in middle schools and offers girls and boys opportunities to learn life tools yet does not challenge their young minds to think and explore why they, in minority communities, are taught how to bake a cake and fix cars.
• While the Progressive Era may have unofficially ended in 1920, it does not mean that communities such as El Paso still do not feel the remnants of it today. For the ethnic Mexicans of El Paso and Latinas/os across the nation, both then and now, life is still complicated by the perseverance of American assimilation and acculturation.
• The persistent view of being a cheap labor source and being seen as recent arrival no matter how many generations your lineage may go back, makes it difficult to climb out from behind racial perceptions. Moreover, the devaluing of ethnic Mexican youth in education maintains and further creates a working class community.