Draft Thesis Statements

In the following blog post I will be constructing several thesis statements by following the listed instructions found in A Students Guide. 

Thesis #1

In her analysis of Secretary of Educations Arne Duncan's responses to Republican education efforts and a press statement from Duncan regarding school funding inequality, Emma Brown refers to credible sources to enhance her own credibility and compelling statistics to dramatize the potential detriments of Republican legislation, tying it all together with passionate and critical word choice of the entire situation. With the combination of these strategies, Brown argues that situation is at an impractical standstill, with both sides falling short of doing right by students and schools.

                      This thesis focuses more on the construction of Brown's argument, which helps to outline my analysis. It does fall short in contextualizing the article itself in depth, which could be an issue, but it's pretty easy to add that context in the introduction before the thesis is introduced.

Thesis #2

Emma Brown, author of the Washington Post article "Arne Duncan Blasts House Effort to Revise No Child Left Behind", appeals to her younger, politically diverse audience by connecting to their values through credible sources from both perspectives and challenging the intent of both political parties with dismissive and condescending tone, all in an effort to prompt some form of change that will give educational authority to states and school districts, rather than the government.

                      This thesis looks more into the content of the essay and the political focus, which gives me a lot to run with in terms of arguments. However, it has less of a focus on the rhetoric as my previous thesis, which could cause some confusion in the construction of my own analysis.

Balayogi, Srividya "Writing" 7/11/13 via Flickr.com

REFLECTION

After reading through the posts of Chloe and Michael's, I found that the two were very different from one another and both offered insight. Chloe had two brief, direct arguments which had differing opinions. It made me wonder what the article actually argued, which was an important attention grabber for the reader. However, neither included much context of the actual essay and that made me realize just how important that is in constructing a thesis. Michael's statements were constructed very similarly to mine. He brought to my attention the importance of pointing out where the author may fall short in remaining objective in their argument and how much it influence the effectiveness of the article. Both were very beneficial for me realizing that which makes a thesis very strong.