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Focus

  

When conducting research for a writing project, you gather a lot of information, evidence, and data, all of which help you consider how to answer your research question or test your hypothesis—what specifically to focus on. The focus—articulated in a thesis in most academic writing—is the starting point for the development and organization of a research project. You might find it helpful to consider the thesis as the answer to your research question.

Often the focus of a research project—the answer to your research question—is stated in a clear and specific thesis statement, frequently placed at the end of the introduction. The thesis statement should state the topic of your project and its point of significance—the claim or overall point you are making about this topic, whether your purpose is conducting analysis, reporting information, or arguing a position. One way to think of this point of significance is that it’s the “so what?” of your project. You can quiz your working, preliminary thesis statement by asking, “so what?” after you read it. To make sure you include the “so what?”/point of significance, be sure your thesis statement satisfies questions of how and/or why about your topic.

Your thesis will most likely change from prewriting through multiple drafts until up to the final draft. Early in your writing process for the project, the thesis will be for you as a writer, to help you stay focused on what to include and exclude in your project (and how); this is often called a working thesis statement. (Don’t even think about drafting your project until you’ve written out a working thesis for yourself!) However, by the final draft, the thesis is for your readers, to make clear for us your topic and the overall claim you are making about it in your project—its point of significance. Oftentimes, student writers find their intended thesis statements in the conclusion of their first draft. This makes sense, right? When you go to draft you may have an idea of what you want to write (a working thesis), but it’s not always as clear to you until you’ve written the draft. Therefore, before submitting your first draft, see if you have a better thesis idea stated in your conclusion and move it to the end of your introduction, re-working your body paragraphs as needed. This way you’ll have a stronger, more focused first draft for review.

TRY THIS to understand effective thesis statements. Let’s review and critique some sample thesis statements. Which one do you think is the best and why? What’s wrong with the other four? Find out by first clicking on the number of the thesis statement you think is best, and then click on each of the other four to discover what’s working well and what needs work in the rest of them.

Thesis 1 - There are a lot of similarities and differences among the primary and secondary sources I found on literacy experiences for women.

Thesis 2 - Many women have led interesting lives with varied literacy experiences.

Thesis 3 - I believe that literacy skills are necessary for women.

Thesis 4 - How have literacy demands changed for women over time?

Thesis 5 - In order to be “taken seriously” in college, women students have had to work harder to achieve and prove their competence and literacy in certain fields of study, which is shown by the following discussion of various women’s literacy experiences in the 1950s-1970s.

Focus in Context

While in general the writing projects you write will need to have some sort of focus, what that focus looks like and how it works in the text will depend on the context. For example, the type of thesis statement, where it goes, and if the writing project even calls for an explicit thesis statement, all depend on the discourse community, genre, and your rhetorical situation.

TRY THIS to understand focus in context. Review the following passages from various academic texts and complete the following:

  1. What can you say about what you think the discourse community, the genre, and the rhetorical situation are for the texts from which each passage is excerpted? Feel free to do a web search of the journal titles and authors to see what academic disciplines they are from.
  2. What do you notice about the concept of focus when it comes to each text? Compare and contrast as helpful to illustrate or show what you notice.
  3. If it were your job to identify the conventions or “rules” for focus for each text’s discourse community, genre, and/or rhetorical situation, what would you say? For example, “in this discourse community and genre it seems that. . .”

After responding in your notes, click on each passage to check your responses.

Passage 1 From the article “Philanthropy in the Millennial Age: Trends toward Polycentric Personalized Philanthropy” by Elizabeth Crisp Crawford and Jeremy Jackson in the journal The Independent Review

From the end of the introduction section:

“We argue that millennials are not lacking in public spirit and that their preference for decentralized and personalized interactions requires a different approach to engaging them in the peer production of philanthropy marketing. Drawing upon recent literature exploring polycentric governance, coproduction, and emergent orders, we demonstrate that. . .” (552).

Passage 2 From the article “Remembering George Washington: What Do Instructional Materials Teach Us about Washington’s Patriotism?” by Jason C. Fitzgerald in the journal Social StudiesThe Independent Review

From the end of the introduction section:

“In light of Washington’s unquestioned role as a Founding Father and the socializing nature of instructional materials, two questions will be explored: (1) Are. . .features of patriotism evident in the Education Center’s account of the life of George Washington? and (2) How does the language used in the Education Center compare to the language used to describe George Washington in a sample middle school textbook? To answer these questions, I will first briefly summarize the literature on patriotism. . .” (243).

From a section toward the end of the article called “Conclusions”:

“Through the use of explicitly patriotic language, the Education Center exhibit attributes Washington’s actions to personal patriotic motivations. . .In contrast only 6 percent of the history textbook passages used explicitly patriotic language” (246).

Passage 3 From the article “When is More Better? The Impact of Business Scale and Scope on Long-Term Business Survival, While Controlling for Profitability” by Janet Bercovitz and Will Mitchell in the Strategic Management Journal

From an introductory section called “Theory”:

“Hypothesis 1: The greater the baseline profitability of a firm, the longer a business will survive” (63). [three more hypotheses follow]

From the final section called “Discussion and Conclusion”:

“Thus, we suggest that related scale and scope provide stocks of organization capital that confer business survival advantages independent of baseline profitability flows” (76).