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What is your general topic or what problem area are you interested in? How would you express it in a few words?

What central question are you trying to answer about your topic?

What do you think is the best answer to your central question? From your research so far, what have you concluded? What is your main point about your topic?

In one sentence, how would you describe your findings to someone who asked you about your research?

How does your idea differ from other views you have read? What do you have to say about your topic that is new?

Ask why? And how? Of what seems like a thesis statement when it begins to emerge. What relationship exists between the ideas you are describing? For example, are you suggesting that one idea causes another? Contradicts another? Subsumes another?


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