The Thesis Statement W ELCOME TO S EMINAR 6. W ELCOME TO S EMINAR 2: T HE T HESIS S TATEMENT To...

WELCOME TO SEMINAR 6

WELCOME TO SEMINAR 2: THE THESIS STATEMENT

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Note that I will place each slideshow into Doc Sharing, so you can review our material and look at any slides we might have missed during seminar.

They will also be available for seminar makeup.

UNIT 4 WORK—WHAT’S GOING ON THIS UNIT

Reading: How to Write a Thesis Statement from Indiana University's Writing Tutorial Services.

Explore the APA Quick Guide

Project Overview: Justice is a big topic, so you will want to focus on a specific area of justice.

Gangs-Drugs-Sexual Crimes-White Collar Crime Seminar: We will focus on topics and thesis

statements and your checklist for assessing the writing situation.

REVIEW: UNIT 4 DEFINING THE PROBLEM)

Our project this week will include these steps:

Your thesis statement

Describe three specific claims or main points (because statements)

A STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS: THE NEXT STEP

We’ve been talking about following a process to write your Project.

Our next step in the process is developing the thesis statement.

THESIS STATEMENTS – WHAT ARE THEY?

Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is just that: a statement about a topic: “The Xbox, the Wii, and the PS3 are in a fight to the death for supremacy of the video console market.”

NOT a simple fact: “Last year 30 million game consoles were sold in the United States.”

NOT a question: “How popular are game systems in the U.S.?”

THESIS STATEMENTS – PREPARATION

Before you can decide on a thesis, you must know two things: Your topic The point you want

to make about that topic.

THESIS STATEMENTS

The thesis statement is the cornerstone of any essay. It almost always is presented in the introduction—do NOT fall for the temptation of holding it until the conclusion to add to the “suspense.”

Your thesis is your central idea stated in one sentence (occasionally two sentences). The only purpose of the rest of your essay is to expand and explain this statement.

THESIS STATEMENTS

For example, let’s look at our hypothetical topic—game consoles—and our working thesis:

“The Xbox, the Wii, and the PS3 are in a fight to the death for supremacy of the video console market.”

The sole purpose of your paper at this point is to expand on this.

INFORMATIVE VS. PERSUASIVE

Note that there is a difference between an informative thesis and a persuasive thesis.

An informative thesis makes a general point about a topic.

a persuasive thesis makes an argument about a topic.

INFORMATIVE VS. PERSUASIVE

For example, here are two sample thesis statements:

Informative: “Stem cell research is growing in both financing and potential.”

Persuasive: “More time and money needs to be dedicated to stem cell research if we are to take full advantage of its possibilities.”

See the difference?

FROM THESIS TO PAPER…

Once you have developed a thesis statement, you have the basic outline for your paper.

THESIS STATEMENT VIDEOS

Thesis Statement Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=5HePQWodWiQ

Placement of Thesis Statement: http://classweb.gmu.edu/rnanian/ThesisGuidelines.html

  Creating a Thesis Statement: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

resource/545/1/

THESIS TO OUTLINE

Thesis: The Xbox is the best game system because of its graphics, it’s online capabilities, and because there are more games for it than for the other systems.

Outline: How will this paper be organized?

I. Intro

II. Graphics

III. Online capabilities

IV. Game options

V. Conclusion

APA BASICS

We use APA citation style at Kaplan.

What do you know at this point about APA?

APA BASICS

APA Citation Style was developed by the American Psychological Association

It is one of several citation styles, including MLA, Turabian, Chicago, Bluebook, and AP

Kaplan has adopted APA style for it’s courses

APA BASICS

Why do we cite our work, and why use a specific citation style—why not let everyone decide how to cite his/her work?

APA BASICS

We cite our sources because it is academically honest to give credit to the original author of an idea.

We also cite our sources because it allows us to borrow the credibility of the original author.

We use a specific style so that our work is standardized

Finally, we cite our sources so that our readers could locate our sources and read them if they wanted to do so.

APA BASICS

How do we cite sources?

APA BASICS

This question is more difficult to answer, as there are many rules to APA—more than we can cover in an hour.

However, there are some basics that we can cover.

APA BASICS

APA Citation Style is a two-part system.

Part I: the in-text citation

Part II: the references page

APA IN-TEXT CITATIONS

The in-text citation is what we include in the text of the paper when we use outside material.

This is a fairly basic citation, giving only the author’s last name, year of publication, and when possible, a page number (only required in quotes):

(Johnson, 2003, p. 34)

APA IN-TEXT CITATIONS

In-text citation samples:

(Johnson, 2003, p. 34)

(Allen & Gorden, 2005, p. 133)

(National Institutes of Health, 1999)

(“How We Communicate,” 2004)

(as cited in Johnson, 2001, p. 15)

APA IN-TEXT CITATIONS

If we include the author’s name in our “signal phrase,” we leave it out of the citation:

According to Johnson (2003), “People are just too crazy” (p. 34).

Allen and Gordon (2005) claim that cats are really man’s best friend (p. 133).

APA IN-TEXT CITATIONS

This is not enough for our reader to find the source. There are probably thousands of pieces of published work under the name Johnson published in 2003.

Why not include ALL of the information on the source here?

APA REFERENCES PAGE

Think of the in-text citation as a sort of index entry to the full citation, which is found…where?

The “References” page.

APA REFERENCES PAGE

The “References” page gives a full bibliographic entry for our citation, according to APA rules. Also note:

This page is alphabetized

It uses “hanging indents”

The first word of the citation will match the first word on the in-text reference, allowing the reader to find the citation

APA REFERENCES PAGE

There are nearly as many types of references as there are types of sources, but there are similarities between them. The author’s last name goes first, followed by initials for first and middle names.

Jones, B. A.

APA REFERENCES PAGE

This is followed by the date of publication.

Jones, B. A. (2003).

Anderson, F. R. (2001, July 10).

APA REFERENCES PAGE

Book and article titles only use capitals in the first word, the first word of a sub-title, or proper nouns. Book titles are italicized and include publication information:

Jones, A. B. (2001). How to skin a cat. New

York: Houghton Mifflin.

APA REFERENCES PAGE

Periodical names are also italicized, and follow the article title. Note that periodical names use capitals letters differently:

Jones, A. B. (2003, July 10). Twenty ways to

eat a horse. New York Times, p. C5.

APA REFERENCES PAGE

Online sources include a retrieval statement including date and URL.

Brown, B. R. (1999, July). Why shy people

don’t eat cats. Social Psychology

Journal, 6 (9). Retrieved September

25, 2008, from http://socialpsyc.org/cats

APA REFERENCES PAGE

Online library databases use the database name and doc. number rather than a URL.

Brown, B. R. (1999, August). Why shy

people don’t eat cats. Social Psychology

Journal, 6 (9). Retrieved September 25,

2008, from Academic Search database

(A8843672)

APA IN-TEXT AND REFERENCES PAGE

In-text citations and references page citations match:

In-text:

According to Jones (2003), “People have eaten cats for centuries” (p. 33).

References page:

Jones, A. B. (2003, April). How about we eat a cat!

Science News, 15(6), 12.

APA IN-TEXT AND REFERENCES PAGE

In-text citations and references page citations match:

In-text:

Andrews (2001) argues that people have always had weird tastes.

References page:

Andrews, P. Q. (2001, March). People’s weird eating

habits. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from

http://www.letseatcat.com

CITATION AND REFERENCE VIDEOS

APA REFERENCES PAGE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmcaYdZDa-U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d45FYQgPbNE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeqKZ2U1jlU

CITATION AND REFERENCE VIDEOS

APA Format - Citations http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=E8zbkjn-zIM APA Citation Style & Format http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=7HsYUA-helk APA Format – Sample Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pbUoNa5tyY

FINAL COMMENTS

Any questions or comments?

I’m going to turn off the Whiteboard now so that we can finish up.