ESSAY TOPIC AND THESIS STATEMENT INSTRUCTIONS

What is a Thesis? What is a Purpose? What is a Topic Sentence?

Your Essay Topic Proposal and Thesis Statement posting must clearly state your
research topic, Thesis Statement, and two scholarly sociological sources (not including
course materials) directly related to your essay topic. The introductory paragraph of an
essay should always contain three specific statements or sentences: 1) the Purpose of
the paper, 2) the Thesis Statement and 3) the Topic Sentence.
Purpose
You should state the Purpose of your paper in a sentence. In this sentence, tell
the reader what you will examine in your paper. For instance, if I was going to write a
paper about foreign domestic workers (also known as live-in nannies usually from the
Philippines or the Caribbean), my statement of Purpose may look like this:
The Purpose of this paper is to explore how the Live-In Caregiver Program oppresses
women of colour.
Thesis Statement
The Thesis Statement is the one-sentence argument of your paper. This is
central to your paper. It is your argument. Without a Thesis, your paper has no
argument. Furthermore, your argument must be based on a position. Be mindful that
this is not the same as a personal opinion. Once you state your Thesis, in the body of
your paper, you should critically and analytically support your argument. Your argument
must be based on research (in other words, the use of secondary scholarly sources).
Using the same example, my Thesis might look like the following:

This paper argues that state policies reproduce racism/sexism/classism by exploiting

women of colour through the Live-In Caregiver Program.
Your Thesis Statement should be clear, concise, short, and focussed. It must
identify not only the social problem, but the social structure that creates, facilitates, or
reproduces this social problem. A Thesis Statement should not use the words due to
or as a result of. In your statement, you should also avoid the words, how, discuss,
examine, or explore. These terms convey a Purpose, not a Thesis. If you are using
these words, you are not making an argument per se. Importantly, a Thesis is not a
Conclusion or Statement of Findings. A Thesis Statement is an argument. Your Thesis
Statement should be carefully thought through.
Topic Sentence
The last sentence in your introductory paragraph is the Topic Sentence. A Topic
Sentence lists the various sub-topics you are going to examine to make your argument.
Using the example above, my Topic Sentence would read:
This paper discusses the following sub-issues: 1) racism/sexism/classism and the LiveIn Caregiver Program, and 2) the non-existence of permanent residency status for
women of colour and their experiences of legalized exploitation.
Your paper may be based on two or three sub-issues. I am looking for in-depth
critical analysis, not superficial breadth. In other words, I expect students to cover a
limited number of issues, with analytical depth. Papers that briefly mention numerous
issues but fail to adequately time analyze these issues will result in a low grade.

Your paper should be written in the third person, not the first person. Do not
include any personal experiences. This is a research paper that relies on scholarly
sources. This is not a reflection paper. Do not mention yourself or use I in the paper.
Citations and Statistics
You are being asked to write a sociological paper. Therefore, in your paper, you
must draw on sociological sources. The course outline defines a sociological source.
Please refer to this section of the course outline.
Throughout your paper, you must properly cite any and all ideas and research
findings, as well as direct quotes from other authors. In a 7-8 page paper, you should
not use more than one or two direct quotes. Your paper should be written in your own
voice, using social science citations to credit the scholar whose ideas and words you
are using. The citation of scholarly sources and the ideas of other authors (even if you
put these ideas in your own words), shows that you have done research and are
providing evidence, analysis, and criticism for your argument. Failure to cite scholarly
sources is considered plagiarism, even if by neglect alone. Make sure, however, that
your paper is not littered with direct quotes after direct quotes. This would make your
paper problematic. When you draw on a direct quote, you will need to first explain and
set-up the quote, and then use your own words to explain what the author said and how
this is relevant to your argument and your paper.
Citations in the body of your paper should appear as social science citations in
APA style. The following is an example of a social science citation in APA style for direct
quotes:
(Last name, year of publication, p. page number). For example: (Miles, 1989, p. 45)

The following is an example of a social science citation in APA style used when
the idea is not a direct quote:
(Last name, year of publication). For example: (Miles, 1989)
When you are citing an idea that you have presented in your own words, the citation
does not require a page number.
Your paper should include a full and detailed bibliography of all literature used.
Pay attention to detail. Ask yourself these questions: Is your source an edited
collection? Is the book edited by one person but chapters written by different people?
Ensure that you cite the correct scholar (that is, the author who wrote the chapter, not
the editor of the book). Your bibliography should contain a full and accurate
bibliographic citation for each source.
The following are three examples of APA style bibliographic sources for three
different kinds of sources. Bibliographic references should be single-spaced with double
spacing between each reference. The first is a sole authored book:
Last name, first name. (year of publication). Title of book. City of publication,
province/state of publication: Publisher.
Miles, Robert. (1989). Racism. London, UK: Routledge.
The second example is an edited collection. This is a book that is edited by one
person or more, and every chapter in the book is written by a different author. You
should cite the author of the chapter that you have used. In the bibliographic reference,
the author of the chapter and the chapter title comes first, followed by the editor of the
book and the title of the book. For example:
Last name of chapter author, first name of chapter author. (year of publication). Title of
chapter. In name of editor (Ed.). Title of book. City of publication, province/state of
publication: Publisher.
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Mitchell, Allyson & Lara Karaian. (2010). Third Wave Feminisms. In Nancy Mandell
(Ed.). Feminist Issues: Race, Class and Sexuality. Fifth Edition. Toronto, ON: Pearson.
The last example is a journal article:
Last name, first name. (year of publication). Title of journal article. Title of journal.
Volume number(Issue number): pp. page numbers.
MacKinnon, Catherine. (1983). Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward
Feminist Jurisprudence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 8(4): pp. 635658.
You are being asked to write a paper that is analytical and critical. It is not
necessary to use statistics for this paper. However, you are required to use sociological
analysis and criticism to make your argument. Keep in mind that statistics alone do not
say anything. Statistics require analysis and interpretation. The same statistics can be
used by scholars who are arguing from different perspectives, to say very different
things.
If you do wish to use statistical data in your paper, you must also interpret and
analyze what the statistic is saying, in a critical way. Remember that this is an
analytical and critical paper. For a detailed discussion, please refer to the section of the
course outline.
Structure, Organization and Writing Style
The mark you receive on the essay is based on several issues that are outlined
in the course syllabus: 1) Clarity of Argument, 2) Content, 3) Structure and
Organization, 4) Referencing, Style and Grammar, and 5) Bibliographic References. I
have outlined the Clarity of Argument above in the discussion of What is a Thesis
Statement. I have also discussed proper Referencing and Bibliographic References in
the section above on Citations and Statistics.
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The Content of the paper reflects how you support your thesis throughout the
paper. What sub-issues do you choose to discuss? Are these appropriate and on-point
for your topic? Do you use theories properly? This last issue is particularly important.
It is necessary to understand the perspective that theories come from. Do not use
theories that contradict each other, unless you use one theory to criticize another
theory. Do not use contradictory theories without criticism. To do so undermines your
entire paper.
Make sure that the theories you use go together and do not contradict each
other. You are welcome to use a particular theory or perspective to criticize another
theory. However, you need to make sure that when you cite different theories, you ask
yourself, do these theories support each other? If not, pick a particular theory and use it
to criticize other theories, or use that theory to analyze your issue. Make sure you do
not contradict yourself, otherwise you have not supported your argument. This paper
requires you to support your argument by using appropriate concepts, as well as
arguing from a particular framework or theory without contradicting yourself.
The structure and organization of your paper requires you to write a logical paper
that makes historical, chronological and theoretical sense. Make sure that the subissues you analyze are presented in historical, chronological order. If you do not, your
paper lacks logic and becomes completely unintelligible.
A central part of the structure and organization of your paper requires you to
have an introduction that includes a purpose, thesis statement and topic sentence as
outlined above. It also requires your paper to make logical sense historically and

theoretically. This means presenting your work in chronological order and using a
theory or theories that complement (and do not contradict) each other.
An important part of how you present your argument reflects the Writing Style
and Grammar in which you write. Do not describe the findings of other scholars
studies. This is simply descriptive. Do not describe other scholars case studies. The
way that you should be using other scholars work is to state what other scholars argued
in their case studies or articles or books or book chapters. Get to the point! What did
that scholar argue and how is this relevant to your argument? This is how you should
address other scholars work. What did that scholar argue? This can easily be
summed up in one to two sentences. Then, you need to analyze how what another
scholar argued is relevant to your essay.
So, how do you state what another scholar argued? There are only a few ways
to do this. They are as follows:

Miles (1995) argues that..

Miles (1995) states that.

Miles (1995) notes that.

Miles (1995) claims that.

Miles (1995) declares that

Make sure that when you use these terms, you are actually stating in one
sentence what the author is arguing. This should not be their purpose, or a
description of their study, or a description of how they did this research, or a description
of how many people they interviewed, or a description or summary of what they were

looking at. Get to the point! What are they arguing and how is this relevant to your
paper!
There are certain terms that should never be used. These are as follows:

Miles (1995) describes.

Miles (1995) mentions.

Miles (1995) discusses.

Miles (1995) summarizes.

Never use these terms. Do not describe! What is the author arguing? When you
use these terms, it indicates that you are just using a whole bunch of useless wordiness
that says nothing. Get to the point! You need to spend the 7 to 8 pages arguing using
critical analysis. You do not have time to use a whole bunch of useless wordiness!
Useless wordiness means that your paper says nothing and you have not provided
critical analysis. Stay on point! You need to make an argument and support that
argument using critical analysis, not description.
Finally, make sure that you proof read your paper before you hand it in. Get rid
of useless wordiness. Get rid of useless description. Make sure your paper is
analytical and critical. Make sure you are making and supporting your argument
through critical analysis and not description. Make sure that your spelling is correct.
Make sure that your word processing program has not changed your incorrectly spelled
word to a correctly spelled word that is not the word you intended! Read your paper
carefully before you hand it in.