A Thesis for a Given Prompt
On the exam the interpretation is asked for
- A thesis still expresses an interpretation and still requires defense through textual evidence and a line of reasoning.
- What changes on an exam is that a prompt tells you what the interpretation must be about.
- A brilliant thesis about something the prompt did not ask scores as if it were not there.
The habit that prevents a good reading of the wrong thing is...
Every literature prompt names what you must interpret.
Read the prompt for its noun
- Every literature prompt contains a noun naming what you must interpret: a relationship, a shift, a complexity, an attitude.
- Underline it, and make sure that noun appears in your thesis.
- That single habit prevents the commonest zero-earning essay: a good reading of the wrong thing.
Restating the prompt in your own words makes a serviceable thesis.
It is relevant and undisputable — and defensibility is what earns the point.
Defensible, not just relevant
- Relevance gets you into the question; defensibility earns the point.
- The poem presents a complex attitude is relevant and undisputable — it restates the prompt.
- Name what the complexity consists of, and the thesis becomes something a reader could argue with.
Thesis, restatement, or off-prompt?
Sort each opening for a prompt about a speaker's attitude to her childhood home.
Name what the complexity ____ of, rather than asserting that it is complex.
That is the interpretation the rubric is looking for.
Restating the prompt is not a thesis. The poem conveys a complex attitude toward the past uses the prompt's own words and asserts nothing a reader could dispute. Name what the complexity consists of — that is the interpretation the rubric is looking for.
A list of devices counts as previewing a line of reasoning.
It never did — a preview names claims, not techniques.
Previewing is still optional
- A thesis may preview the line of reasoning; the CED still does not require a list.
- Under time pressure a short preview helps you as much as the reader — it fixes the paragraph order before you start.
- But a list of devices is not a preview of reasoning, and never was.
Select all the questions in the sixty-second prompt-thesis check.
Three checks, each catching a different way an essay fails at the first sentence.
A prompt-thesis check, in sixty seconds
- Does the prompt's noun appear in my thesis?
- Could a careful reader of this text disagree with it?
- Can I name, in order, the two or three claims that will defend it?
Prompt noun: the speaker's complex attitude toward her childhood home. Restatement: the speaker's attitude is complex. Thesis: the speaker can praise the house only in the past tense, so her affection depends on the house being unrecoverable. Same subject, and only the second can be argued with.
On an exam, the prompt names what the interpretation must be about — put that noun in your thesis. Relevance gets you into the question; defensibility earns the point, so name what the complexity or shift consists of rather than restating the prompt. Previewing the reasoning is still optional.