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Yewon Kang
Professor Ethan Goffman
ENGL101
13 May, 2016
A Unified Thesis Statement
While I was studying at university in Korea, I wrote a number of essays. Since I got
many As from the Korean writing class, I was confident in writing. I still felt easy when I
first decided to take ENGL101, because I thought I could write an effective essay in the same
way that I have done in Korea. However, I began to know the difference between Korean and
English essays as I continued taking the course, and the most interesting writing skill that I
found was creating a thesis statement. After I knew how to develop the thesis statement, I
could unify my ideas and focus on the heart of my essay.
The first essay that was assigned to me was a narrative essay, which had to be about
my personal experience that brought me to a realization about myself. Even though my
professor obviously stated that students should write a definite thesis in the first paragraph,
I did not know how important it is, because I had never heard or learned about it before
taking the class. When I write an essay in Korean, I only need to write something that could
grab the attention of readers in the first paragraph. Therefore, I started my essay with the
background of the incident without a specific thesis statement.
When I got an edited paper from my professor, I felt that something wrong was going
on throughout my essay. As I did not create a thesis statement, it lacked focus and it was
difficult to find a purpose of the paper. The main point of the essay was the reason why I
came to study in the United States. However, it was more like a story rather than an essay,
since I tried to put as many reasons as I could to support the topic. The essay was illustrating
a camp experience at first, which is about the time when I met bilingual friends and felt

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jealousy. Then, I suddenly changed the scene to an English education in Korea. It was even
worse, because it was not the end of the paper. I came back to the camp experience again and
wrapped up the essay, which was confusing. After rereading it with the comments, I realized
that I did not concentrate on the goal of my essay, because I could not fully understand what
the thesis was.
I tried to develop a powerful thesis statement on other essays, but I struggled at first,
as it was difficult for me to express the main point of the paper with only one sentence. For
this reason, I read many articles from the textbook, Back to the Lake, and found how others
create a thesis statement of their writings. Additionally, I started to prepare writing more in
detail with an organized structure. I made a list that I learned from the class, with the entries
that I wanted to write about in the essay.
For example, when I was preparing for an argumentative paper, I thought about and
wrote down a main claim, reasons, and supporting ideas on the list. My topic was English
diversity and I wanted to argue that people should be tolerant of different types of English in
oral communications, because I thought it would help people communicate clearly, as they
would listen to each other more carefully when they are inclusive of English diversity. Since
the ideas were organized in my head through this progress, I could create a thesis statement
more easily than before.
Furthermore, I learned that a thesis statement helps writers link their ideas together in
an essay. As it is a sentence to summarize the main point of the paper, I always kept the
sentence in mind while writing the body of the essay. Therefore, I could continuously
concentrate on the main point and avoid losing track of the topic. If there was no specific
thesis on an essay, it would be difficult to sort out whether an example I want to use is related
to the main point or not, and the paper could be ended up covering too broad spectrum of the
topic.

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After I realized the importance of a thesis statement, I applied it to my papers for

other courses at Montgomery College as well. In ENGL190, I was assigned to write a literary
analysis based on the idea of New Criticism, and my professor mentioned that there should be
a thesis. If I did not learn about what it is and how to write it in ENGL101, I would have been
confused. Fortunately, as I was aware of how to make an effective thesis and how to develop
the idea with it throughout the essay, I could write a clear statement in the paper that I
analyzed the meaning of the hills in Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway: The
hills are the backgrounds of the story, and at the same time, they help readers to understand
characters emotional conflicts and the situation that they are in. I was happy that it was
commended by my professor as an excellent New Critical thesis.
ENGL101 also helped me connect all the courses I have taken together, as the terms
and skills that I learned from the class formed a basis of my writing in every class. Other
courses that I have taken are Introduction to Human Communication and Fundamentals of
Acting, which seem to be hardly related to writing itself. However, I wrote an outline of my
presentation in communication class, which required me to create a powerful thesis for
delivering valuable speech, and I was assigned to write a play critique in acting class, which
needed to include a strong main claim. It means that the whole courses worked together for
me on the basis of writing.
Even though I have already finished three years at university in Korea, I could not
get a chance to write a professional English essay, before I take a College Writing class in the
United States. That is why I am glad to be here at Montgomery College and to take the
opportunity to learn English more deeply. Writing an essay seemed too difficult for me at
first, as the writing style here was different from that in Korea, but after learning about a
thesis statement, and how to structure supporting ideas with the definite main point, I could
write an essay more easily and make my paper more organized. However, although my essays

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are improved, I know that they are not perfect, and still contain some grammatical errors to
be fixed and words that could have been more specific. Therefore, I will not stop writing as I
finished ENGL101, but I will work hard to be a better writer who has a convincing idea with
a clear main point by creating a unified thesis statement.