Thesis Practice and Emotive Language

For the past two days in class, we have been focusing on revising and improving our essays that we wrote at the end of the 3rd quarter for our "Anthem" test. Here is the prompt we originally addressed.



To begin, we took a look at our thesis. Many of us had great thesis statements, but a few needed some work. So, to review, we practiced thesis writing with the handout below. (The notes written in are from working together as a class; they are not my personal opinions, but examples)



A thesis can be written many different ways, but it should include 3 big things:

1. Topic (what the prompt is asking you to write about)
2. Position (which side you are taking)
3. Reasons (these should not be specific scenarios, but rather general reasons or benefits/consequences of the position)

Your thesis should also avoid:

1. First and second person pronouns (I, me, my, you, your)
2. Personal opinion statements (I think, I believe, personally, in my opinion)
3. Any reference to the quote in the prompt

Students made minor changes to their original thesis statement and then rewrote them onto a notecard to be approved. I read them over Monday night and returned them with feedback on Tuesday. If you still have not turned yours in, be sure to do so as it will be worth 25% of the formative grade given at the end of the week!

Next, we took a look at how we could possibly improve our word choice to increase our emotional appeal. We discussed how an essay should not maintain the same scope of focus throughout the essay, but should have more of an hourglass shape.

The beginning of your essay should be a broad view of the topic and position, giving reasons that apply to many possible examples and scenarios.

In other words,

Instead of: Stealing is sometimes acceptable because a person could be hungry. 

Try: Stealing is sometimes acceptable because it could mean the difference between life and death for some. 

The second thesis could apply to MANY examples, not just those involving food or starvation. The writer wants to take a broad look at all the possible reasons it may be acceptable to steal.

However, when the writer begins their body paragraphs, they narrow their focus down to one or two SPECIFIC scenarios and examples and gives specific details. Then, the focus begins to widen again as the writer gives their analysis and commentary, explaining how the example relates back to and proves the thesis.

Then, we move into the conclusion and restated thesis, where the focus broadens out again.

So what does this have to do with emotive language?

Well, your introduction and conclusion are the best places to add this emotive language.

Of course, you can add emotive language to any point in your essay, but it has the most impact as an attention grabber and a clincher.

At the beginning of your essay, your reader is still trying to figure out where you stand on a topic and why. In the body paragraphs, you are trying to prove your point. But by the end of the essay, you should not have only convinced your reader that you are right, but you should transfer your passion to them as well! You don't just want them to agree, you want them to be your ally!

To examine how we can use emotive language, we watched three different motivational speeches from classic movies. While we viewed them, we filled out the handout below.



You can view the movie clips below:


Braveheart (Begin at 3:30 to 5:10)


Rocky (Begin at 1:45 to 3:55)


Pursuit of Happyness (sic) (Begin at 0:24)

On Wednesday, we will discuss how we can add emotive language into our on writing and begin our revising and editing activities that will take us through class on Thursday and help us rewrite our final essays.