Draft Thesis Statements

A thesis statement guides the body of an essay. A thesis statement must be deep enough to require evidence and support, but specific enough to be addressed in a 4-5 page paper.

MacEntee, Sean "Thesis" 10/14/2010 via Flickr CC BY 2.0

1. David Francis' attempt to convince readers that the F-35 program is a complete waste of money, in his article "How DOD’s $1.5 Trillion F-35 Broke the Air Force," is generally effective for his intended audience, but lacks full rhetorical development.

2. David Francis relies heavily on logos and ethos in his article "How DOD’s $1.5 Trillion F-35 Broke the Air Force," to develop the argument that the F-35 program is ineffective and costly. Considering the context of the article, his argument is effective, but extremely limited.

3. In the article, "How DOD’s $1.5 Trillion F-35 Broke the Air Force," David Francis primarily employs statistics, expert opinions, and appeals to values or beliefs shared by the audience as techniques to support his argument that the F-35 program embodies poor DOD spending. His persuasive argument is effective for the audience that he is targeting.

I will probably use some combination of the above thesis statements. Each of them has its own merits and issues, but they all represent a prediction of my analysis of the article.

I read Carter and Mika's thesis statement draft posts. After reading their draft thesis statements, I am more confident in the methodology I used to create my thesis statements. I understand that the focus must be on rhetorical analysis, and the thesis should present an argument about the example article's rhetoric. Carter and Mika both went into a more detailed analysis of each of their theses, but I think mine are similar enough and developed enough that I can use ideas or structure from any of them rather than selecting one.