Academic writing is clear, focused, formal, and structured form of writing that always need to be backed up by evidence. The sole purpose of academic writing is to aid the reader in developing a conceptual understanding. To achieve this aim, a thesis statement and textual evidence are the two most important structural elements of academic writing. One is meant to bring clarity to a manuscript, and the other is used to prove a claim’s validity. The thesis statement is the sentence that explains the purpose of an essay and paper. Concurrently, textual evidence is a piece of verified text of an original document that supports a thesis statement and an author’s claim. This article comprises two main sections: one for describing the top steps to state a thesis statement, while the other will describe different ways to provide textual evidence in an academic document.
A: Seven steps to writing a thesis statement:
Technically, the thesis statement is the one that helps authors summarise the whole research and academic paper in one line. To write a statement that can best summarise the whole content of a paper, clarity and good planning are of utmost importance. The following are seven simple steps shared by expert researchers of a dissertation writing service to help authors to write a definitive thesis statement:
Step # 1: Know exactly what is required for drafting a paper:
Reading is the best way to start an academic paper; it will allow researchers to get familiar with all key terms important to knowing the nature of research. After reading one or two full texted articles, selecting words for the thesis statement becomes easy.
Step # 2: Start from the initial understanding:
The initial guidance is the key to taking a head start. Knowing what a journal needs in a document to recommend for publication and what a supervisor instructed about an assignment are necessary to navigate the right direction. After confirming the right route to complete an academic writing task, the next step must be brainstorming and researching to add new information to what you already know.
Step # 3: Research is a powerful tool to unknot all ambiguities:
The assignment brief or the Journal’s requirements are the best indicators to measure the depth of research to complete a task. The more you research, the more mysteries you would be able to solve is the formula to succeed in all research tasks. Starting with research and ending with research are two approaches that help select the most appropriate content for stating a thesis statement.
Step # 4: Select a short list of words that can best explain the nature of the research:
The thesis statement must not exceed 20 words. Hence, to sum up, a whole research task in such a limited word count is indeed technical. The research helps choose the most appropriate words to be incorporated into the thesis statement. For this, you can make a list to note down all the right words relevant to a writing task.
Step # 5: Add words that least match your area of interest in another list:
The list formed after initial research often contains more words than required. Still, with time, as an author exposes more layers of knowledge, they may start thinking of many terms superficially relating to a writing task. You can make another list to exclude irrelevant terms at this stage.
Step # 6: Use the remaining words to make a productive or well-structured thesis statement:
In step sixth, you will have only highly relevant terms to get incorporated into the thesis statement. Thus, clipping together all these terms will make a great statement you can confidently place in the introduction.
Step # 7: Proofread and use it to outline:
The last step in making a thesis statement is proofreading to know whether the drafted statement is up to a pre-defined standard or if more effort is required to make it attractive and informative. Once you confirm that a thesis statement is well-constructed, you can start making an outline using it.
B: Ways to give textual evidence:
In a research paper, the textual evidence can be used mainly in three ways: by citing the original author, paraphrasing, and directly quoting from the text.
1. References:
The authors can use another author’s work to support a claim by following certain rules. An author can use text from another’s work as the source evidence, as a piece of information, to analyse an object, and to provide a counter-argument. However, in all these cases, the proper reference of the original author right after the text is necessary so readers can instantly know who originally claimed a certain piece of information.
2. Paraphrasing:
Paraphrasing is stating someone else’s words using different but similar vocabulary to express the same ideas. For using textual evidence in research, an individual must just read the text to grasp the actual meaning. Grasping the actual meaning allows a paraphraser to memorise the contextual meaning and key points to restructure sentences by ensuring clarity. The paraphrased text may increase or decreases in length due to changes in the arrangement of facts and ideas or vocabulary. No matter how you paraphrase a piece of information to support your argument, the use of reference is necessary.
3. Direct quotes:
Another popular way to use a text to support or oppose an argument is through direct quotations. It is the easiest method to use information as evidence; it allows all researchers to support a claim by directly using someone else’s words with quotation marks to explain the relativeness between the novel findings of an already published work with the current claim. However, proper references are also necessary in this case to avoid committing academic misconduct such as plagiarism.
Final thoughts:
The dream of attaining excellence in academic writing tasks can never come true without gaining mastery in developing a great thesis statement and exploring the best ways to use textual evidence. Thus, the seven steps described in this article are effective enough that you can better structure your writing task by developing a great thesis statement. Furthermore, knowing three ways of using textual evidence (paraphrasing, direct quoting, and referencing) helps researchers support a claim without committing research misconduct. Overall, by improving the quality of these two elements, you can increase the quality of your assignments and research papers to a greater extent.
