Speaker 1: What's up guys? Welcome to The Smart Student. Today's video is part 3 where I'm going to teach you how to craft a thesis statement. Part 1 was all about finding an effective research topic, then creating your research question. Now we're at the thesis statement. So right away I want to start with what the Greek translation for thesis means. Thesis in Greek means position. So that right there is what a thesis statement is. It's your position. It's your stance on something. And so when it comes to academic writing and research, well what position are you taking? It's based off your research question. So what is your final lasting impression after knowing everything you do after researching and writing your paper? So right now we know that a thesis statement is your position. The more formal definition of this is that a thesis statement, it's a short statement that summarizes the main point or claim of a piece of academic writing. This claim is usually what you're going to develop, support, explain throughout your paper. So to summarize that, a thesis statement, it's a short statement about the purpose of your paper. What main point are you making about your research topic to answer your research question? Okay cool, we know it's the main purpose of our paper. Now let's get into well what does it contain? Because that sounds complex and quite frankly it's not. So first and foremost your thesis statement should be about one to two sentences long. And now I do want to clarify this, it belongs in your introduction, typically towards the end. If you want to check out my structure for mapping out introductions, you can watch this video right here because it can be the last sentence or a couple sentences before that. But quite frankly, two sentences at the end of your introduction, it will never go in your abstract. I've been asked that a lot, always in your introduction. Now what is the correct way to deliver this thesis statement, this purpose of your paper, condensed down into one, maybe two sentences? Well it needs to contain these three components. It should have your topic, your position on this topic, and your leading evidence that supports your position. So your topic, that's pretty self-explanatory. What was the topic you chose? Your position, this is gonna be the answer essentially to your research question. What did you find out? What did you learn through your research and your studying? And then finally the evidence, well that's gonna be your claims to back it up, that support, that develop your position. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna jump into my computer and explain the steps for crafting that thesis statement where you can see the visuals of exactly what our thesis statement is. Alright I'll see you inside. And here we are. Alright so what you're looking at right now is what we've been working through in the previous two videos in case you haven't watched them. So in this example this was our research topic and our research question. Now I'm gonna discuss these two components briefly because they are a part of the process of developing your thesis statement. If you want to learn how to create them in depth, go check out the videos. But for time's sake let's start with the first step, the first thing you need to do when it comes to developing a thesis statement. And that is, well you have to choose your researching topic. That is point A where you're starting out because typically when you're given an assignment, a paper, you have a general topic. Ours was time management and now time management is broad, it's general. There's a lot of information there and so the first step is to take that general topic that you were given and find the researching topic that you're going to use for your paper. And so the researching topic, this is simply the specific scope you're going to conduct your research from your general broad topic. The way you land on your effective researching topic is a process of doing preliminary research and refining. So preliminary research is the initial research you do on a general topic so you can you can get an understanding of what information is available to you. Once you have that understanding you can start to formulate that scope. And so what we came up with is the impact proper time management skills have on the graduation rate of undergraduate students. Great. Step one complete, we have our topic. Then you're going to move on to step two which is creating a research question within this topic. So you know how the topic is point A? Your research question, think of it is the compass, the direction, what's guiding you towards your final position which is going to be the thesis statement. We'll get into that in a second. But when it comes to developing your research question, this is a very similar process to coming up with your topic except now we're going to do what I like to call exploratory research. So instead of surveying the information that's available to me, now we're going to pay attention to what is being said within that information. So when it comes to the impact proper time management skills have on graduation rate, what is being said out there? For example, is the information telling me that proper time management skills increases the graduation rate? Or on the other hand, is there a lot of data about procrastination and how when students procrastinate this decreases the graduation rate? Now I always tell students to keep your topic neutral because in preliminary research you kind of just get a general understanding of that topic, of the research available to you. It's not until you start doing that exploratory research or even later on your full research that you understand this topic. And so after doing our exploratory research, we came up with this question. What are the leading time management practices that are associated with a high graduation rate of college students graduating from their bachelor's program while enrolled in online programs? We came up with that because we found that the information we saw a lot associated with time management practices and increasing the graduation rate. So we want to study what those time management practices are, but also note how our topic it shifted a little bit. Rather than only researching undergraduate students, now we want to research undergraduate students in online programs. So basically the information told us that, hey, time management practices, there's a lot of information out there right now on how it helps online students graduate. So that's our question. Now we're gonna go into our first working thesis statement. And now I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret. When it comes to creating your first working thesis statement, you know the best way to do this? Answer this research question, because that's what we're doing now. And it really is that simple, because now our research is going to be based around finding the answers to this question. And so it very much is an evolution process, by the way. And so I am gonna go ahead and reveal this here, which is gonna be our first working thesis statement. So we go do the official research now. We're trying to find these answers. And this is what we come up with. We come up with undergraduate students enrolled in online programs are more likely to graduate from their online bachelor's programs if they adopt time management practices into their daily routines that ensure they meet their workload on a regular basis. Now I want to start by saying right away that, note how that's kind of rough. It's not perfect. It's not polished. We kind of understand where we're going, but the language isn't perfect. And I want you guys to understand that as you're creating your thesis statements, you're going to keep refining. So don't be afraid to just put an answer down on paper. It's what I've done here. And so what we're going to do is what I like to call the three component test. Because remember, thesis statements, that was definitely wrong. Let's do a white work, so let's go black. Okay, if you remember, thesis statements are made up of three components. Topic, position, evidence. That is a solid thesis statement. And so basically, we need to check that we have these three components in this statement and that you're going to ask yourself, is my understanding crystal clear? So let's go ahead and run this test and see if we have everything present, starting with the topic. And so undergraduate students and online programs are likely to graduate if they adopt time management practices. Boom. That right there is our topic. We're good there. Now we need to look for our position. What is our position on this? Remember, our question is we want to know what those leading time management practices are. The answer to that is our position. And quite frankly, we don't have this in this first working thesis statement. So right there, that's my first clue that I need to go ahead and refine this and clarify more. Because my understanding is not crystal clear right now. So that's exactly what we're going to do now. And let's go ahead and reveal this. Here we go. So refine part one. What are we refining? Adopt time management practices. What are those time management practices? So you may need to go do more research at this point, or perhaps you already know what time management practices they are. You simply need to include them in the thesis statement. So your second working thesis statement might be something like this. Undergraduate students enrolled in online programs are more likely to graduate from their online bachelor program if they adopt cognitive stacking time management practices into their daily routines that ensure they meet their workload on a regular basis. Okay, great. Now the next thing you want to do is the exact same thing we did before. And so this is the exact process that's going to help you get to that thesis statement. Once we have a second rough thesis statement, we need to run that test again. We already know we have our topic. Now let's read it. Are we crystal clear on what the position is? What those leading time management practices are in this case? Yes. Now we have it. It's cognitive stacking time management practices. So moving on to the third element. What's the evidence for that? Let's see. Does this last portion, does it support cognitive stacking time management practices? So if they adopt cognitive stacking time management practices into their routines that ensure they meet their workload on a regular basis. Quite frankly, that's not evidence to support cognitive time management practices. That's more of your position. We're just explaining a little more in detail what we mean by that. So as I'm sure you know what's coming next, we need to refine this one more time. So that's exactly what we're going to do now is this final refining process of clarifying what evidence is in this case. And so coming down here, now if you'll note, there is nothing that correlates to the evidence. And so quite frankly, we're not clarifying something, we're adding it in. And now your evidence is simple. When you were doing your research, what information made you take this stance? So what was being said that supported your position in this thesis statement? That's what you're going to add in. And so remember, this is a working thesis statement, so it's going to sound rough. But after adding in our evidence, you might come up with something like this. Undergraduate students enrolled in online programs are more likely to graduate from those bachelor's programs if they adapt cognitive stacking time management practices into their daily routine that ensure they meet their workload on a regular basis because it ensures students complete their projects due to the priority level of tasks. Now, that was a mouthful, so don't worry, we're not finished. We have one more step. We're going to refine this one more time. But let's go ahead and run the three component test. Is your topic present? Yes. How about your position on that topic? Yeah, we have that. And then finally, did you include your evidence? So why do you have that position? Yes, it's right here. It's because those time management practices ensures college students complete their projects due to the priority level of tasks. Now, the last thing we're going to do, and I'm actually just going to reveal all of it so we can discuss it when it's easy to see, is what I like to call refine, revise and finalize. All right. So my final thesis statement for this example might read something like this. The likelihood an online college student will graduate from their bachelor's program can be traced back to their ability to routinely implement cognitive stacking time management practices because it ensures they complete their workload based on the priority level of tasks. So first things first, as you can see, we have our three components. First is our topic. Next, we have our position on that topic. And then finally, the evidence to support that position. Quick note, these components don't have to always be in this order. Just remember that they all do need to be present. But so how did I condense down to this final thesis statement? First thing I suggest looking for, because this is what I do, is I look for repeated words. Because a lot of times when we're writing something out, we're not clear on what we're saying. We use a lot of the same words. And so, for example, meet their workload on a regular basis, complete their workload based on. These are similar phrases. And so I only need to say workload once. So that right there is how I condense down a large portion of that first one. Now let's take a look at undergraduate students enrolled in online programs are more likely to graduate from their online bachelor's program. We have, again, a lot of duplicate material, a lot of fluff, words we don't need. We don't need to put in here twice that they're online programs or even undergraduate students and bachelor's programs. Those are kind of the same thing. And so the condensed version, for me, I would come up with something like this. The likelihood an online college student will graduate from their bachelor's program. Now everything is flowing in a nice consecutive logical order rather than piecemealing all these different words together that essentially mean the same thing. Finalizing your thesis statement really is simply about polishing what you came up with in your working thesis statement. The more information you have on a topic, the easier it is for you to say it naturally. And that really is what this comes down to is you're being knowledgeable on what your position was in your evidence. And so the last thing I want to show you right here is our three components together. We have our topic, our question, and our final thesis statement. And we're back. So that officially wraps up this three-part series of going from your effective research topic, finding that question, that scope you want to study within that topic, and then coming up with that thesis statement. And so if you have any questions, let me know down below. But quite frankly, that is it for today. So I'm gonna take my computer and...