Chapter 11

Chapter 11 is about taking the sources and information you have gathered and putting it together to create a position and a statement that is relevant to your research question.  This statement should be the thesis for your paper and provide a clear statement of what your paper will cover and even maybe your preliminary position based on your personal research.  Make sure you continue to revise your positional statement so that it can be as clear and informed as possible.  Bedford suggests that after making your main statement, you review your notes and important information, ideas, and arguments that you want to use and make sure it fits.  By doing this you can often gain a better understanding of the factual bases of your position and it allows you the chance to reflect on your past positions and possibly even add them into your paper. Drafting your thesis can be quite stressful because it is often thought to be the most important sentence in your paper.  Bedford you to base your thesis purely on the credible information and arguments you found and cited and to try to make it as clean as possible.  For your thesis statement to come out crisp and clean you need to keep in mind the type of paper you are writing and the format it is supposed to be written in.