APES FOOD LAB
OCEAN FOOD CHAIN ich are not relevant to a general audience: “From the time I was small, I have been very active in defending our environment,” “From the first time I saw environmental protestors, I realized that they were all crazy.” Note that some of these topics could be converted into theses that would be arguable to a general audience if they were de-personalized and established as arguable issues. Also keep in mind that personal examples may play a significant supporting role in your essay–but not in the thesis or topic sentences. • A thesis should be very clearly written in precise, familiar terms, avoiding language that is overly vague, broad, specialized, or technical. You can assume that your general audience consists of well-informed, intelligent adults with good, general vocabularies, but you cannot assume they are specialists in a particular subject–at least not in English 1A. Example of a vague and overly broad thesis: “In some cultures, aspects of the environment may play a role in life’s spiritual and metaphysical dimension.” Example of a thesis that is too specialized for a general reader: “The image of the child in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific, historical, and literary narratives is often representing or figuring interiority, growth, historicity, and development.” (This thesis may be quite clear to advanced scholars of literature or history, but a general audience would probably find it too obscure.) • A thesis may reliably forecast the organization of the essay, letting the reader know what main supporting points will be covered and in what order. This forecast is sometimes called a plan of development (POD) or a blueprint. A POD is often a good idea, but it is not an obligatory part of the thesis in English 1A; you may present it in the sentence following the thesis, or you may skip it altogether Example of POD in thesis: Skateboarding should