for the tattoo essay topic, is this an okay opening and thesis?
"To a lot of people, tattoos are cool; they exploit a strong sense of individuality. But what if you simply do not like a tattoo after X amount of years?"
No. A thesis is a statement to be supported by an argument. It is not a question. Presumably, the first sentence could serve as the thesis argument such that the first part is the thesis to be proved or argued for in the essay, and the second part the main supporting claim. I doubt however that this argument could be shown to be valid since a sense of coolness does not necessary follow from a sense of individuality. At any rate, that's not your school so check with your teacher where your school moodle site is. hth
Here's a great handout for writing a thesis: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/545/1/
Maybe you could have your teacher add it to your class site.
So much unnecessary confusion.
1.Determine what kind of paper you are writing:
- An analytical ...
- An expository (explanatory) ...
- An argumentative ...
There is only one kine of paper with thesis - argumentative. A paper with a thesis requires a supporting argument and thus it is argumentative. Analysis is a thesis about a possible way to break down an issue and thus argumentative. Exposition is a thesis about a possible interpretation of a given text and thus argumentative. Exposition needs to breakdown the given text and thus it is analytical in the sense mentioned above.
If you are writing a text which does not fall under these three categories (ex. a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader.
This only shows the poverty of instruction. If a text is not meant to be argumentative there is no need for a thesis statement anywhere in it. An unsupported thesis is absolutely worthless and should better be omitted altogether.
Unnecessary confusion? I'm sure after reading what you wrote the student will be clear as mud
I'm quite certain that the teacher of whatever course that is will not have the same expectations.
I'm more concerned with teachers' confusion than students' confusion. After all if teachers don't understand what they expect, it doesn't really matter how well the students understand what they are expected.