The Thesis Statement Map: A Structural Approach to Writing

This presentation introduces a powerful structural framework for academic writing that helps writers organize their essays and research papers more effectively. The Thesis Statement Map approach demonstrates how a well-crafted thesis statement can serve as a blueprint for the entire paper, guiding both the writer and the reader through a logical progression of ideas.

At the core of this method is the understanding that a good thesis statement does more than simply state an argument. It maps directly to the sections of your paper in a clear, predictable way. The thesis statement serves dual purposes: it prepares the reader's mind for background information, definitions, and contexts about the subject, while also introducing the key topics that will contain supporting evidence. This evidence can take various forms, including statistics, historical information, examples, illustrative scenes, personal experiences, or lab and field results.

The structural framework begins with the thesis statement at the top, which should clearly state your rhetorical goal followed by the key topics that will map to your body sections. This is followed by a section providing background, contexts, and definitions that connects to the reader's existing experience and knowledge. The body of the paper then unfolds through three main topic sections, each beginning with a strong topic sentence and supported by relevant evidence.

The discussion section plays a crucial role in synthesizing ideas, pointing out connections between topics, proposing counterarguments, and incorporating thoughts from other scholars or sources. Finally, the conclusion brings together the thesis and topics, highlights new insights gained through the analysis, discusses broader implications, and offers suggestions or recommendations.

This systematic approach helps writers avoid common organizational pitfalls and ensures that every section of the paper serves a clear purpose in supporting the overall argument.

-- Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. 

Interview with Lynn Levin: Poet, Writer, Translator, Professor

Lynn Levin is well known for inspiring creativity in students and writers at all levels. Together with Valerie Fox, she has edited the widely adopted Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets.  In addition, she is known for her quirky, engaging writing that encourages new ways of perceiving and thinking.  Now Lynn has a new collection of poems, The Minor Virtues (2020), published by Ragged Sky Press.

Welcome to an informal chat with Lynn.

1. What is your name and your background?
My name is Lynn Levin, and I am a poet, writer, translator, and an adjunct associate professor of English at Drexel University. I teach composition, creative writing, and literature classes. Before I started teaching, I had a career in advertising.

Lynn Levin

2. How would you describe your writing practice?
I love to describe things in my poems. I think that refreshes and enhances life. I write to think through experience and capture quirky insights, many of them comic. I want to surprise and entertain my readers and myself. My view of the world is like a picture hung on a wall, then set awry by the settling of the house or a mild earthquake. I guess that’s the quirky part. And I want to be understood. Too much obscurity masks feeling and makes the reader’s job a chore.

3. Please share the name of your latest publication.
I am fortunate to have two recent publications. I just published my fifth poetry collection, The Minor Virtues (Ragged Sky Press, 2020), and I recently published, with my co-author Valerie Fox, Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets, Second Edition (Texture Press, 2019).

4. What is The Minor Virtues about? What are some of the main focal points?
The title section of poems, The Minor Virtues section, begins with celebrations of small everyday practices—among them, fixing broken things and buying produce from the marked-down cart—which, when fancifully contemplated, branch into deeper appreciations of life. The other poems in the book look at life from both serious and comic angles. I include a range of poems in both free and formal verse. Thematically, I like to say that my writing is dark with a funny edge or funny with a dark edge.

5. What inspired you to write The Minor Virtues? 
I wanted to aim for happier and calmer poems, poems that conveyed a love of life even as some of the poems speak of missteps or losses. Overall, I set out with good cheer in mind.

6. Any closing thoughts?
While it is vital that writers speak out against injustice and wrongdoing, I made the conscious decision in this book to tread lightly around those topics and to focus on appreciations, affection, nostalgia, bemusement, and other milder sensibilities

Gamification as Invention Strategy in Writing Essays and Research Papers

Using games can be a good way to get your mind moving when writing an essay, report, or research paper. Now you ask: What kind of games? It could be something where you have to search for something, but the quest approach sometimes does not yield what you need, which is a well-developed idea of the topic in which you are immersed to the point that you basically become the problem.  What we're describing is, as you can already see, a role-playing game. 

So, the very first step in gamification for brainstorming is to identify a problem. 

Next, start clarifying the mission and the characters for role-playing.


    * My Challenge: Dealing with escaped exotic pets in my neighborhood
  
    * Role Play:  What would a videogame hero, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 do?
    * Role Play, Second Round:  What would a famous videogame villain or bad guy do? (What would Bowser do? What would The Joker do?)

Now, once you’ve set up your scenario, don’t let a lack of in-depth knowledge about your selected heroes or anti-heroes slow you down. Remember, your goal is to think of solving a problem, and how to do it in an expedient way that may or may not be very ethical. If you are the extremely unethical Joker, then be sure to reflect on how and why your choices are so, well, evil.

Keep in mind that the gamified mind is the following:
    * Mission-focused
    * Aware of causal relationships / cause & effect
    * Very aware of surroundings
    * Able to predict obstacles and anticipate likely dangers
    * Very aware of competitors and impediments
    * Focused on winning / the prize (desired outcome)
    * Ready to maximize efficiency step by step
    * Willing to apply knowledge gained by prior experience
    * Able to quickly search for helpful information when needed

Gamifying your mind can be a powerful approach to brainstorming because it helps you overcome some of the blocks you might have when you try to develop an idea using written text and outlines, where you are staying perhaps too abstract and conceptual.

By adding the gaming approach, you’re involved in a simulation, and thus are engaging on a higher plane where you are a whole person, focused on an outcome. Focusing on an outcome allows you to organize, streamline, and reality-check your approach, and it forces you to become creative if you see certain obstacles or dangers. By role-playing both a hero and a villain, you’re able to evaluate ethical and unethical choices.

When might gamification not work?  It’s possible to completely stall out on gamification if
    * your goal is not challenging enough
    * your goal can’t be defined
    * you can’t identify any obstacles
    * there are no ethical challenges

If you’re stalling out, you may need to revisit your topic and consider how to make it more complex, so that you have more room to expand your thought process.

After you’ve completed your gamification scenario, the next step is to take a look at transforming the scenario into an outline. You’ll start with THE PROBLEM, and the move to SOLUTIONS, which will be your outline.

Free Video-Assisted E-Learning Text:  Available Now!

Free Download: Writing for Human Relations

Writing for Human Relations, a writing guide with assignments, flowcharts, exercises, and readings, is now available as a free e-book, and can be downloaded or shared with your friends and colleagues. Here is the free download. 

One of the keys to effective human relations is the ability to see different points of view and to develop empathy and understanding of others' perspectives.

Free Download! Writing for Human Relations

Writing for Human Relations takes the position that writing helps you learn about yourself, your values, and also the views and values of others.

In addition to the idea that writing is necessary for self-awareness, Writing for Human Relations champions the idea that the process of writing forces you to think, and as you do so, you have more skill in identifying social issues and proposing changes that can lead to positive social change and community development.

Chances are, you, like hundreds of other learners, will love the flowcharts in the text, and you will find them to be helpful with the task at hand, as well as with other writing occasions. You may even find yourself internalizing the approaches, which gives you a very powerful tool for all your writing, whether for school, work, or social networks.

With a full array of inventive templates, charts, diagrams, outlines, and step-by-step suggestions which have been developed and refined in both virtual and face-to-face classrooms, Writing for Human Relations triggers the flow of ideas.

With engaging templates and flowcharts, it is easy to get started and add details and evidence, to create compelling texts. Above all, Writing for Human Relations brings solid rhetorical ideas and theories of discourse into action, and facilitates the production of engaging, effective writing that improves relationships between individuals, groups, and the larger world.

You may also purchase a printed copy. 

For E-Learning Queen readers:  Try out some of the writing guide flowcharts starting on page 50. E-Learning Queen will put together a gallery of writing that was inspired by or generated by using the flow charts!