Type 1: The Thesis Makes No Claim.
Type 2: The Thesis is Obviously True or is a Statement of Fact.
Type 3: The Thesis Restates Conventional Wisdom.
Type 4: The Thesis Offers Personal Conviction as the Basis for the Claim.
Type 5: The Thesis Makes An Overly Broad Claim.
Groups of five (you have to work with at least three people you have never worked with before)
INDIVIDUAL: Between your group members, decide who will work on generating which type of weak thesis statement. Each of you will come up with one example of a weak thesis statement corresponding to the five types; remember a weak thesis statement can have more than one type of problem, but as long as you weak thesis example fulfills the type of weak thesis statement your group has tasked you with, you're good. Take six to eight minutes to come up with your individual weak thesis statement.
Generating ideas for weak thesis statements: The best place to begin generating ideas is looking in your SSI assignments. You may use any idea/claim in the paper (not necessarily your central one since that may already be sufficiently strong) that fits with the weak thesis statement type you are assigned. The purpose of this exercise is to help you get a sense of how to refine your own thesis statement, so if you are aware that your current thesis idea has a particular problem, feel free to use that as an example. Other place to generate ideas for this weak thesis statement construction is to use our thematic readings or an idea from either of your secondary sources. This can be a completely invented weak thesis statement. The only limitation for this exercise is: it has to be within the confines of our course theme: representations of disaster in the mass media.
GROUP: Now as a group, create a "New Post" and type your five weak thesis statements in order (clearly stating the type of weak thesis statement it falls into). Your task as a group is to spend the next half hour crafting these five weak thesis statements into five strong thesis statements. Post the five weak thesis statements and the five revised thesis statements (which should not fall into any of the five types of faults) as a New Post on the blog along with your group members' names.
*Do not divide the labor up here and decide to fix one thesis statement each; that defeats the purpose of this exercise. The point is to do the five together so you can learn how to identify any of the five main problems associated with writing thesis statements.
