Oct 28, 2007
ON WORDS
Good writing is not about sticking rigidly to fixed pattern
Teachers' favourite formula of 'thesis, proof, conclusion' jumps to wrong conclusion that all essays
must be written this way without exception
By Janadas Devan
MY SON returned from school the other day, distraught. An essay he had written, one which his parents
had assured him was well done, had received a poor grade from his English teacher.
It lacked an introduction and a conclusion, the teacher had told him. 'You must have an introduction that
sets forth your thesis,' the teacher had said. 'And you must have a conclusion that summarises how you
have proven your thesis.'
Where do such theories of good writing come from? I remember some of my own school teachers, more
than 40 years ago, telling me similar tales:
Introduction - tell your readers what you are going to say. Body of essay - proceed to tell your readers
what you had said in your introduction you were going to tell them. Conclusion - remind your readers of
all that you had said you would say and did say.
For 40 years - and for all I know, perhaps for 400 years - this model of the expository essay has been
circulating in the English-speaking world, and I haven't the faintest idea where it came from.
Sir Francis Bacon? His essays often do start with a clear thesis statement: 'Studies serve for delight, for
ornament, and for ability', begins one. But they don't end by returning to the beginning: 'So every defect
of mind may have a special receipt,' ends the same essay, a conclusion that is not foreshadowed by the
beginning.
Bacon's 'thesis statements' are just points of departure, the first steps in the argument, not advance
summaries of what is yet to unfold. He proceeds by examining that initial point - probing it, undressing it,
turning it inside out - to reveal its unsuspected dimensions. As a result, by the time we get to the end, the
conclusion is a total surprise. Bacon's essays are, in essence, contraptions for discovery.
But perhaps our thesis-proof-conclusion model derives from a more modern source. Bacon, after all, is
17th century. Perhaps a 20th century essayist like George Orwell is the origin of this model.
He isn't. One would be hard pressed to find a conventional 'thesis statement' in any of Orwell's pieces.
Instead, he usually starts in medias res, in the middle of things, with an arresting incident, observation or
fact.
'Soon after I arrived at Crossgates ... I began wetting my bed,' is how a delightful account of his
boarding-school days begins.
'In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people - the only time in my life that I
have been important enough for this to happen to me,' is the first sentence of one of his most famous
pieces, Shooting An Elephant, an account of his stint in the Imperial Police in Burma.
My favourite is the beginning of an essay on Marrakech: 'As the corpse went past the flies left the
restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.'
What would I not give - what would any writer not give - for that sort of beginning? Unfortunately, one
cannot give anything in particular to get that sort of thing; one has to be sensitive, observant, receptive in a word, talented - to be gifted with something like that.
Orwell's essays usually unfold naturally from such striking observations or incidences. His pieces do not
have that thesis-proof-conclusion structure that many teachers seem to think is the only possible model
of expository writing. They have an argument, but the argument is in the telling. They conclude, but the
conclusion is not foreshadowed in the introduction.
There are occasions, of course, when the thesis-proof-conclusion model is appropriate. If one is writing a
massive report on the Singapore economy, say, it would be useful to provide what nowadays is called an
'Executive Summary' at the beginning. If one is writing a study of how Workfare is working in Singapore,
say, it would indeed be useful to provide a conclusion summarising one's findings. And if one is writing
up a lab report on an experiment, well, the thesis-proof-conclusion model would be perfect.
But reports and studies and lab reports are not the only kinds of writing our children may find themselves
doing when they grow up.
Some may become novelists. I can't be certain about this, but I don't think a novel that begins with a
thesis statement, followed by proof and concluding with a QED, has ever been written.
Some may become journalists. The best reporting always begins in medias res, for that is the nature of
the news. Reporters have to learn to organise their facts, but they do not organise their facts by forcing
them into the thesis-proof-conclusion model.
The point is writing is various. There is no one model of organisation to fit all its varieties. That teacher
who told my son that his essay must have an introduction and a conclusion - and that these must always
follow a prescribed form - did him a disservice. He was not teaching my son to think through his writing;
he was telling him to merely disclose his findings, as in a lab report.
'What is writing? Simply, writing is how minds think,' writes Susan R. Horton in Thinking Through Writing,
one of the most useful textbooks on expository writing that I have seen.
How does one get ideas? How does one develop them? How does one organise them? How does one
think through one's writings so that one's readers can follow one's thinking? These are the skills that
writing courses should try to impart to students, Horton suggests.
My son's essay, the one that got a poor grade, did have a 'thesis statement' - only, it came at the end,
when he finally arrived at the point he had been working to get to from the beginning. The piece did have
a conclusion - only, my son had aimed for it from the start. They were all there - thesis, proof and
conclusion - but as an entirety, the essay as a whole. That is as it should be.
The teacher did not see this because he was in the grip of a model that bore little relation to how minds
actually think through writing.