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Now that you've been listening to this course for maybe three or four lectures by now, you know how

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I feel about the thesis statement.

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The thesis statement is the most important sentence in the entire essay.

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And so in this lecture, we're going to go ahead and move forward with learning how to write a proper

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thesis statement for a standard academic essay.

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So why is it the most important sentence in the entire essay?

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Well, first of all, let me give you a little bit of background information.

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The thesis statement location.

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As most of you know, that thesis statement is the last sentence of your introduction.

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Right.

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This is a non ambiguous statement.

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That means it's very, very specific and it can be constructed in one or two sentences.

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When you see me do the examples of a thesis statement, I'm only going to use one sentence to do it.

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Write a thesis statement is the single specific claim that your essay will support.

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Examiners love to read.

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They love to read essays that have correctly written thesis statements because the thesis statement

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controls the entire essay.

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If you write outside of the bounds or structure or walls of a thesis statement that you that you wrote

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in your introduction, you completely destroy your essay.

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Most of the time, an essay an essay needs a good thesis statement because that's going to give it structure,

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that's going to give it coherence.

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Cohesion is going to give direction to the argument.

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Right.

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When you talk about the component parts of a thesis statement, a thesis statement is going to answer.

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The question that's raised is going to present the general idea and the position you want to defend.

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And then the blueprint that sketches out how you're going to support your argument, the controlling

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ideas.

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So why is this so important?

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The entire essay, like I just say it is based around the thesis statement after the thesis statement.

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The second most important sentence are the topic sentences because they have a they have the same function

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as a thesis statement, but on a more miniature scale, that thesis statement controls the whole essay.

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The topic sentence controls a specific body paragraph.

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A poorly written thesis statement really hurts your score.

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Thesis statements help you avoid how y.

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So what?

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They they really prevent the examiners from having to have those thoughts come into their mind.

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Because if I read an introduction and I'm asking, well, how how are you going to do that?

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How are you going to argue that?

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Why is that the situation?

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So what if those those words come to my mind?

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That means that you've written a very poor you've poorly written your thesis statement.

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And that's a big, big problem.

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It really, really is.

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So some tips for writing a great thesis statement.

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I know it sounds good, but I want you to write a great thesis statement.

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Number one, assume that the reader that if the that the reader could only read this sentence, if the

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reader only read this sentence, would they know exactly what your paper is going to be about and would

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they know how you're going to argue out, argue that position just from that one sentence?

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Just from that one sentence, if if the reader can't do that, you have a badly written, constructed

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thesis statement.

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The opinion that you have should be clear, especially if it's going to ask you to make a choice.

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Also in the thesis statement, put in your predictors, your controlling ideas, because that's going

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to focus the paper.

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The examiners will know exactly what to expect.

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Well, in his body, paragraph one, he's going to support his position by talking about this.

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And then in his body, paragraph two, he's going to support his position by talking about that.

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Really, really well construct.

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The thesis statement has those elements.

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So again, the parts of a thesis statement.

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First of all, you're going to have the general essay topic will be somewhere in there.

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Number two, provide a precise opinion or choice.

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And then three, give the blueprint or roadmap.

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As I've as you heard me say earlier, some people have been taught to do this in two separate sentences

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in terms of the one sentence taking their position, and then in the second sentence, putting in the

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blueprint or roadmap because of your word restrictions that you have on essays and because of your time

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limit, I think it's better to be concise and combine those two sentences together, which is the way

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you're going to see me do it.

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So let's go ahead and get into some thesis statement examples.

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In these first two thesis statements.

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I'm going to write them in a live setting, meaning I'm going to write the sentences right now while

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you're watching.

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The reason why I'm doing that is I think it's really, really helpful for you as as my student is really,

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really helpful for you to see me typing out the sentence because then you can see sentence structure

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as it happens.

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Very often, if you just are shown a sentence and you didn't see how it developed, you kind of miss

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some of what you need to learn from it.

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So in these first two, I'm going to actually these first two questions.

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I'm going to type out the thesis statement and then in the other ones you'll see them already pre-written

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and we'll be talking about them in a different kind of way.

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So I can really help you with the learning process.

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All right.

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So let's go ahead and do the first one.

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You'll hear me go silent while I'm typing it out, but you'll be able to see it on your screen being

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typed out word by word.

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And I'm going to minimize my screen when I do it.

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Right.

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So here's the first question.

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You already know this question because we're again, I'm trying to teach this as coherently as I can.

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You know, you've seen this with the question.

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You've seen this probably with the question analysis, you've seen it with the outlining.

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And now I'm going to use this same question for doing a thesis statement.

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So I'm going to try to be really, really consistently coherent throughout the entire part of this part

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of the course.

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This part of the course.

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So that you can really build a picture at the end of the entire process.

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Right.

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So I'm going to go ahead and write this first one.

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Right now, this is the one that is about the boarding schools.

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Right?

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Some people feel that boarding schools are an excellent option for children, while other people disagree

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for various reasons.

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Consider both sides of this debate and conclude there's my outline right there, and now I'm going to

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construct my thesis statement.

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All right.

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And there you have my thesis statement.

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Remember, this is the last sentence.

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The last sentence of the introduction.

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Right.

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This essay will explore arguments for both sides of the debate.

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That's what I'm required to do.

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So the reader is going to understand that from the sentence and provide detail, analysis, they, the

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readers with deciding on the quality of these institutions.

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I'm not going to give an opinion.

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Right, because it's telling me to consider both sides of the debate and conclude.

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So I'm not giving an opinion.

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So that's why you don't see me saying how I feel about it or stating my side of it.

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Now I'm going to go ahead and move forward with the second one.

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I'm going to go also right.

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This one in a live setting.

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And it reads Overpopulation and major centers around the world is a major issue.

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On the other word, major, twice.

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What are the problems with this?

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What are the solutions?

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There is the outline right there.

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And then now I'm going to construct the thesis statement or the last sentence.

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The last sentence of the introduction.

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Right there we have it.

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The analysis, contained within the following paragraphs will explore the issues and solutions surrounding

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overpopulation.

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Now, it was really important that I put in, at least at a minimum, that we're talking about overpopulation

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in urban areas.

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If I just said the analysis contained within the following paragraphs, we'll explore the issues and

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solutions period.

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If I just said that, then it would be more of a template boilerplate sentence.

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And so it's important that you really add in something specific from the question so that you don't

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fall into that boilerplate template situation.

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And so that's that's the that's how you write a thesis statement, of course, before that are the other

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sentences of the introduction.

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The first sentence, of course, is your general idea.

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Then you have the, the.

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The second sentence is the specific rephrasing, paraphrasing of the question.

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And then your third sentence.

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Last sentence is your thesis statement, which is what I'm doing right here.

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So now we're going to go back to full screen mode.

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Right.

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And in this next one that's coming up now, you're going to have the thesis statement already present,

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and I'll talk about it from a different standpoint.

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In those first two, I just wanted you to really see construction.

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I wanted you to have a firm grasp, a firm grasp on how to really put together.

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The thesis statement is not overly complicated.

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Okay.

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So here is the question about tobacco.

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Tobacco should be treated as illegal like other drugs.

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Smoking has not has not a single positive issue, but lots of negative effects.

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Therefore, it should be banned.

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There is my outline right there on the right hand side below the question.

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And now here before you is the thesis statement.

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So it reads, This essay supports smoking by first proposing reasons it should remain legal and then

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arguing for its positive attributes.

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So when you look at the thesis statement, we have all of the necessary elements there.

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They know my position that I support smoking.

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Now, in real life, I've never smoked in my life.

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But I mean, I'm writing I'm writing from this standpoint because just because I want to I mean, it's

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not a matter of of choosing what you like or don't like.

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Just choose the easiest thing to write.

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So we have my position and then they know first I'm going to talk about that it should remain legal,

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not be banned.

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And then second, I'm going to talk about that.

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It does have positive attributes.

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So I'm hitting all parts of the question.

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There's no mystery.

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The examiner can see exactly what's coming, and that's what makes a great thesis statement.

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Here's the next question.

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The international community has asked the public to act immediately on reduction of fossil fuel consumption.

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To what extent do you agree or disagree?

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There is my outline on the right hand side.

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You can see that I completely agree with this situation.

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And here is the thesis statement, the introduction, last sentence.

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In fact, policymakers should reduce petroleum due to pollution and alternative sources of power.

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That's it.

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That's a correctly, properly written thesis statement.

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Direct to the point.

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Right.

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Direct into the point.

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You have my position should be reduced and then you have the controlling ideas, pollution and alternative

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sources.

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The examiner knows exactly what is coming.

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And as I've told you, this is just the last sentence.

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You have two other sentences that are before this that make up a complete introduction.

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But I always teach doing a thesis statement first because it's the most important sentence.

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In fact, if for those of you who are great at outlining, I would actually advise you to make writing

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writing the thesis statement as part of your outline.

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So that way you already have your body paragraphs outlined and you have your thesis statement written

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out that's going to help you to be able to write even faster and more focused for those of you that

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are able to really work within that three minute clock.

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Very, very well.

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Next we have thesis statement number five.

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This is the one that this is the question that's talking about if you have a problem, are you going

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to go seek advice from an experienced person or are you going to go do your own self-directed Internet

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research?

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Right.

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And if you remember, I chose the experienced person.

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And here is the here's a thesis statement right here.

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Both options offer enticing benefits, but experienced sources present the better alternative due to

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common past themes and sounding board benefits.

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So there you have my position, right?

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You have my position that the experience sources are better and then you have the controlling ideas.

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Right now, let me say this.

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You could have actually written this actually much, much more concisely.

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Like if you if you had just put experience sources present the better alternative due to common past

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themes and sounding board benefits.

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That would be absolutely fine.

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That would be absolutely fine.

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And in fact, when, when I probably write the full essay for this one, I'm probably going to write

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it that way because I think that's actually more direct.

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But I wanted to show you how you can do a thesis statement and use a compound sentence structure or

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compound sentence format.

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And so the reason why it's starting off with both options offer enticing benefits is because in the

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previous sentence I mentioned what the two options were.

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All right.

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So thank you very much.

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That is part number one of writing thesis statements.

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I hope that it really, really benefited benefited you.

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And I look forward to instructing you.

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And part number two.

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Thanks a lot.

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Have a great day.