Research 8
Formulating a Thesis
Statement
Your thesis must be presented in
the form of a statement, not a question. You can, however, use a question
to form a thesis statement. For example, your preliminary research
may have led you to wonder, "Was Mozart poisoned by his rival Salieri?"
All you need to do is to turn this question around into a thesis statement
to answer the way you suspect your research will go.
For example, both of these are well-written
thesis statements:
- Mozart was poisoned by his jealous
rival, Salieri, in one of the great unsolved murders of all time.
- Mozart was not poisoned by Saleri,
but rather died of the plague, a common cause of death at that time.
As you can see in the above examples,
your thesis statement does not needs to be lengthy; a single sentence is
usually sufficient. It must, however, be a clearly stated point that you
can gather enough evidence through your research to support and "prove.".
Click here to see examples of some other thesis statements.
