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Inver Hills Community College

          

          
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PARTS & SECTIONS

   Click on a title below:

Part I.
Basics/Process

  A. Chapters 1-6:
      
Starting

  B. Ch. 7-13:
       Organizing

  C. Ch. 14-20:
       Revising/Edit
ing

Part II.
College Writing

   D. Ch. 21-23:
        What Is It?

   E. Ch. 24-30:
      
 Write on Rdgs.

   F. Ch.31-35:
       Arguments

  G. Ch. 36-42:
       Research

   I.  Ch. 49-58:
       Majors & Work

Part III.
Writing to Literature

 H. Ch. 43-48:
       Literature

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 Study Questions

 

                                                

Student Response about Thesis Essay Writing

                 
A Story from a Student

          

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Lisa Gallegos
Eng 1108-64
Journal #5 A3

How I Learned to Write a Thesis

by Lisa Gallegos

If you were to look at my writing today, you might think I have some skill at it. But if you were to look back at me a few years ago, you would notice I didn’t even have the slightest clue as to what a thesis was. I feel that I am as good as I am at writing solely because I have put in a lot of practice and time into it.

Due to the fact that I was always enrolled in the honor English classes at my school, I have been exposed to writing essays for a longer amount of time than most of the students in my grade.  Although writing essays was something I had to do early on, I did not fully understand what an essay was until I reached my freshman year in high school.

Mrs. Murr was my English teacher that year. Let me tell you, her class was no joke. I was used to not having to do anything until the last minute and still manage good grades. Once I entered her class; however, I realized that wasn’t going to cut it. It was essays all the time in her class and in the beginning I was averaging C papers. From then on I quickly learned that I needed to do something to fix that. I developed a method that worked best for me when it came to writing essays. I first began with learning what an essay was inside and out. I made sure that I understood all the parts to an essay and their importance within it. After I did that, I could apply what I have learned to writing future essays.

As far as I was concerned, an essay was made up of several parts. An essay contains an intro, body sections, and a conclusion. The intro needs to include one’s thesis and tell what the reader is to expect from the paper, the body needs to support the thesis and follow the pattern the intro laid out for the paper, and the conclusion needs to close the essay. I then used this layout, and still use it today, for every essay.

This layout also helped me to create and use a rough outline. I tend to do a lot of the thinking for a paper in my head, and sometimes it gets confused up there. So in an attempt to fix that, I learned that using an outline can help keep things sorted. An outline also helps during the actual writing of the paper because it serves as a map of what you have to do next.

Learning how to write an essay was not easy; essays are complex and require a lot of thought. Once I understood exactly what an essay was, I was able to write better essays. This method has worked for me to this day; and even when I was required to write essays in Spanish for my Spanish class, I used the same basic method and still got through it!

Return to top.

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Section F. Argument

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Chapter 34. Thesis:

Introduction

Basics

Advanced

Samples

Activities

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Student Response

                    

Related Chapters:

Researching

Disagreement w/Reading 

Literary Thesis

Professional Proposal

Magazine/Nwsltr. Article

IMRaD/Science Report

Case Study

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 Related Links in
OnlineGrammar.org:

Prizewinning Student Papers

12. How to Write Theses

14. Online Readings

16. Research Writing

20. Major/Work Writing

             

 

Updated 1 Aug. 2013

  

   

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Writing for College 
by Richard Jewell is licensed by Creative Commons under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
WritingforCollege.org also is at CollegeWriting.info and WforC.org
Natural URL: http://www.richard.jewell.net/WforC/home.htm
1st Edition: Writing for School & Work, 1984-1998. 6th Edition: 8-1-12, rev. 8-1-13. Format rev. 11-28-21
Text, design, and photos copyright 2002-12 by R. Jewell or as noted
Permission is hereby granted for nonprofit educational copying and use without a written request.

Contact Richard.  Questions and suggestions are welcome.