English 28/practice for English 101

Thesis, argument, outline, and response to newspaper editorials

1) Find a newspaper editorial (for example, through http://www.latimes.com under “Commentary”). First read the introduction and conclusion. Decide upon the topic of the essay and the editors’ opinion on that topic. Topic plus opinion is a simple definition of thesis, or a statement of an author’s goal in an essay, what she attempts to convince the reader to know, do, or believe.

2) Second, look through the middle of the essay for the reasons, examples, or evidence that are used to support the thesis. These reasons, and the order in chic they appear, are sometimes called the argument structure for an essay.

3) Practice identifying the thesis and argument structure with several different editorials, until you can list them, or outline the essay, in about ten minutes.

4) Once you can outline a short essay in a few minutes, then practice bringing in an additional point useful for explaining the topic, a point not included in the original. practice then creating an alternate thesis: take the same topic but make a different opinion on it than the original offered. This could simply be an opposite opinion, or perhaps it might take a form as these: the original was half right but half wrong; or the editors forgot an important point and therefore created an incomplete thesis; or the analysis of the original came from a point of view or set of assumptions inappropriate for the topic.

5) After outlining, additional points, and alternate theses are familiar and comfortable to deal with, put all the steps together and move to the next step of outlining a rebuttal or counterpoint essay to the original:

A) Outline a short essay or newspaper editorial;
B) Consider the original thesis and create an alternate with the same topic
but a different opinion;
C) For each reason, example, or evidence offered in the original,
outline an additional point that challenges the original thesis and
supports your alternate thesis.

6) Review your work step by step with a tutor then turn in your counterpoint essay outline (note that you are not asked to write out the entire essay, but you may of course if you like for more practice).