How To Compose A Thesis For A Comparative Essay: Vital Advice For High School Students

High school writing assignments are important towards developing composition skills that people will have to use throughout their lives. Learning how to do write great papers correctly can lead to lots of success both academically and professionally. It’s not uncommon for high school students to have trouble learning some of the basic building blocks of great writing, such as the thesis statement. Here’s some vital advice for high school students on how to compose a thesis for a specific kind of assignment; the comparative essay.

Understanding the comparative essay

The comparative essay assignment asks students to compare and contrast two or more ideas or items and citing their similarities and differences, while presenting a thesis statement that presents why one might be preferred to another in a specific scenario. Each idea or item should be presented in an informative manner evenly throughout the paper. While the author does provide an argument pointing at a preference, most of the paper should remain subjective.

Narrowing the focus of a topic

Before embarking on the project one should narrow the focus of his or her essay to a single manageable idea that is neither too large or to small that one can’t provide the right amount of detail for a well-rounded comparison. It’s a good idea to come up with a few different ideas and do a little background research before committing to any one topic. It’s vital that the topic you choose can be thoroughly discussed with even amounts of academic evidence.

Starting with a draft thesis statement

Now that you have done a little background research you should have some idea about how to draft your thesis statement. Start by clarifying what your opinion is on the topic then work towards making it a simple but clear statement that is argumentative in nature. Ideally, you want to be concise, but you’ll likely have to revise your statement after you’ve written a first draft and can be more precise about it later.

Revising your statement to fit new argument

After you’ve crafted an outline and have written your first draft, you may find that your argument has changed a bit. Now is a good time to revise your argument statement so that your comparative essay better conveys what you want to state. Set your paper aside for a few hours and come back to it with a fresh mindset; you’ll be able to reset your argument and compose a new thesis entirely.