Need Help in Explaining a THESIS statement better

[bit_pattern]

Thanks for the replies I am hoping to get more. I'm curious if my explanation is CLEAR to you guys or am I writing and explaining it in a way that can be confusing. The other thing they do is when they DO finally get the thesis statement down, the subsequent paragraphs don't match their reasons.

Example the woman who wrote this



went on to write paragraph two about corruption in the system and paragraph 3 about low income families.

She should have written paragraph 2 commercializing the park experience paragraph 3 driving out low in come families.

It's like they aren't getting that it has to MATCH. I've told them that the thesis statement informs the reader which side you are on the two things you will dicuss in the next two paragraphs.

They still don't get it.

Are they writing plans? I'm currently doing an undergrad degree, I work at a learning centre where we offer peer support for students needing help with exactly this sort of thing. Developing a clear plan in advance, i.e. dot points that set out a logical sequence, can help to make everything fall into place. I usually construct a topic sentence for each claim, then dot point the elements that will support the claim. It almost seems from your description that the student in question is trying to fit the essay to the thesis rather than the thesis to the essay. If she were to write out two paras with clear topic sentences, then it should just be a matter of rewording the TS' into a single sentence.

 

[Minoosh]

Developing a clear plan in advance, i.e. dot points that set out a logical sequence, can help to make everything fall into place.

"(Recommendation) should be done because Reason A and Reason B."

It's not particularly creative but apparently grad-school admission committees are not looking for originality. As in a lot of fields, once you demonstrate a thorough grasp of the rules you can experiment with breaking the rules. Unless you're an air traffic controller, which thankfully I'm not.