Growing Up With Literature

It is rather bored to start the lesson with the definition of thesis statement. However, as we are going to write a position paper and a research paper on literature, we have to learn how to write a good and strong thesis statement.

A thesis statement is a sentence that explicitly identifies the purpose of the paper or previews its main ideas. There are six guidelines we need to bear in mind in writing a thesis statement. They are:

a. a thesis statement is an assertion,
b. a thesis statement takes a stand,
c. a thesis statement is the main idea,
d. a thesis statement is narrow,
e. a thesis statement is specific and
f. a thesis statement has one main point.

It is easier to remember these six guidelines than to put them into practice. I have chosen the poem “Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister” by Robert Browning as my choice of literary text for position paper. Though I have done a theme paper on it during the course “Teaching of Poetry”, I still find it difficult to write a thesis statement on it for the second time.

At present, my topic and thesis statement for the poem above are as follow:

Topic:
Social Roles Versus Private Personality: Hypocripsy in “Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister”’

Thesis statement:
Though a monk is supposed to practice his faith by being a good and moral person, Robert Browning has exposed his religious hypocripsy by contracting his social roles and his private personality in the poem “Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister”

However, I don't like to do something I have done before. I am a person who likes to do unfamiliar texts because I want to learn extra things from them. Maybe I will think of using another text which I have or have not learnt during lecture but I have not done any assignment on it. I think that by doing so I can learn more knowledge and improve myself more in writing.