how to write a summary of your thesis

How to Write a Thesis Summary

Your thesis summary is the distilled essence of your thesis: a tool to underline the strengths of your research and make yourself recognizable as a competent scholar.

The importance of writing a good thesis summary is often underestimated and it is not too difficult to understand why. Even in the cases where a student has seriously engaged in writing his thesis, the summary is usually the last thing that gets done. The typical scenario is therefore the following: the bulk of the work has finally been done, the deadline to submit the thesis is imminent. Time is running out and, consequently, when it comes to set the summary down, this is written in a very hasty way… I am pretty sure that you can relate to this situation and – trust me – you are not the only one. Yet, this is a pity! Your thesis summary deserves to be written with a certain care for several good reasons. An effective summary is the best way to impress your readers. It will be the first thing to be read and – as hard as it is to admit – the first impression is what really counts. You should therefore think of the summary as a distilled and concentrated essence of your thesis: a tool to underline the strengths of your research and make yourself recognizable as a competent scholar.

Especially if your thesis is written in another language, setting down an accurate, compelling summary in English can be the first step to internationally disseminate your work. In this regard, keep also in mind that an English summary of your thesis may be required for a job application or a PhD-position. Having said that, how to proceed? Here you are some useful steps to write an effective summary.

Elaborate a thesis statement

The thesis statement . is the most important part. This is a sentence usually placed at the beginning of the summary and it is aimed at clarifying the main research questions of your work. The thesis statement must be clear and concise. MA theses, but also PhD dissertations, usually concern very narrow topics. So, avoid being vague and explain the central idea of your research as specific as possible. Let’s do some practical examples. A sentence like:

“the aim of the present study is to show how English skills can be improved in several ways” is certainly too vague.

Instead, a statement like:

“the aim of the present research is to show how the use of Ludwig can improve English writing skills, by providing reliable texts to get inspiration”

defines a narrower field of research. In addition, as the last example demonstrates, a good thesis statement can be enforced with further arguments.

For example, one could state that:

taking inspiration from a database of 300 million English sentences can indeed help a student to perfect their phrasing, by seeing words in the context of real sentences. A mere automatic correction tool, instead, carries the risk of worsening the student performance, for example by favouring the memorization of wrong phrases and expressions.

Explain the structure of the thesis

Each thesis is usually divided into diverse chapters, such as an introduction, a section dedicated to explaining the terminology, a chapter for the methodology, the discussion of the data, the results of the research etc. A good summary must give a clear idea of how you have organized your research step by step. So be very clear and use sentences like “in the first chapter of my thesis I treated”, “while in the second…”, “the analysis of the data has shown that” etc. And, of course, do not hesitate to use Ludwig if you need examples to take inspiration from. Keep in mind, you may have made the discovery of the century… but if you are not able to explain how you achieved such a result, you will be considered a charlatan.

How to write a thesis summary: a practical example

In this regard, it is good practice to read a number of thesis summaries and to analyse how they are written. Nowadays all the most prestigious universities offer free access to their online repositories, where one can find great inspirational models. See, for example, this website by Cambridge University. Now, let's analyse the structure of one of them:

The Italian giallo film was a type of thriller that was produced in huge numbers between the early 1960s and the late 1980s. This thesis contributes to recent scholarly attempts to situate the giallo within its socio-cultural historical context but resists the critical tendency to read these films as passive and transparent reflections of social attitudes in post-war Italy. Rather, I attend concretely to the form of these films and, specifically, to their critically neglected sound designs . I argue that the giallo’s voice tracks were conditioned by the commercial imperatives of Italy’s post-war popular film industry and that these commercial imperatives were in turn shaped by wider social, economic and political phenomena. By theorising the voice as a mediator between the giallo text and its industrial and social contexts, I show that these films both registered and reified social change. Chapter 1 demonstrates that the anonymous narrator of Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) adopts a range of sonorous modes throughout the film. Each of these sonorous modes invokes a specific set of intertexts which are vital to tracing both the giallo’s cultural origins and the increasingly globalised socio- cultural landscape from which it emerged. This chapter then shows that Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) uses the model of the cinematic voice-over to explore the subjective experience of urban space in post-war Italy. The film suggests that by 1970 the ability to vocally ‘narrate’ and thus control space had become a fundamental assumption of the modern, cosmopolitan subject. Chapter 2 analyses Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) and Sergio Martino’s Torso (1973). Both films draw on longstanding Italian cultural stereotypes to pitch the silence of the rural against the vocality of the urban. The films use silence and the voice as ‘cartographic’ tools to delineate the profound socio-economic divisions between Italy’s rural South and its more urban North, but they also illustrate the giallo’s underlying affinities with its silent cinema ancestors and so challenge the assumed temporal borders between cinematic eras. Chapter 3 argues that Argento’s Tenebrae (1982) and Fulci’s The New York Ripper (1982) variously mimic the vocal aesthetics of television. These films lay bare both the increasing dominance of the Italian cultural landscape by imported commercial television in the 1980s and the neoliberal economic project that underpinned that trend. Ultimately, they question the stability of the nation itself, precisely because the voice — now fractured across a global mediascape — is unable to signal national specificity.

The sentences in bold highlight how the author carefully organized the structure of the text. He started with a well elaborate thesis statement. As you can see, the object of the research is well defined and narrow: the study focuses on Italian thrillers , produced during a specific historical period between the early 1960s and the late 1980s. Moreover, the investigation depeens a specific aspect: the use of sounds in this movie genre. Then, the scholar explains in detail how he organized his work step by step, by summarizing the content of each chapter.

Ultimately, we can say that to write a theis summary is a less daunting task than one might imagine at first sight!

Keep in mind why and for whom you are writing

There is a huge difference between writing a summary for the theses database of your university and to write a summary for a more ambitious purpose. As mentioned above, a summary of your thesis may be required for a job application or to get a PhD position. So, if you are facing this kind of situation, you must “use” your summary in a smart way. Are there any points of contact between your thesis and the position you hope to get? If yes which ones? Is it the topic? Or, perhaps, in order to undertake your research, you have used a tool/method/program that could be pertinent with this position? So, tailor your summary in order to highlight what you need to stand out from the crowd and… good luck!

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A thesis summary is a highly condensed version of the longer paper. It highlights the main points that have been covered in the paper while concisely describing the content of the thesis. In most cases, the summary of a thesis and the abstract serve the same purpose.

A thesis summary is a succinct and abridged rendition of the lengthier text. It succinctly summarizes the key aspects discussed in the paper and provides a brief overview of the thesis's substance. Typically, the summary of a thesis and the abstract have a similar function. They offer a comprehensive summary of the key aspects of a thesis. Therefore, the summary allows the reader to promptly grasp the primary content of your thesis. This allows them to ascertain their level of interest in your work.

A thesis summary often includes a concise overview of the main points and findings of a thesis.

When requested to provide a summary, you are merely expected to compress the content to its key points. A comprehensive summary of thesis research should encompass only the crucial components. The summary should encapsulate the central concept of the work, as well as the subordinate arguments that may be intertwined with less significant information.

Several learners often mistake a thesis statement summary for an analysis. An analysis is a comprehensive examination and exploration of the methods, concepts, and significance present within the text. However, it is important to note that a summary does not involve providing a response or evaluating the concepts presented in the text. When assessing a paper, you need to summarize its content in order to identify the topics that you will be examining. An analysis cannot be replaced by a summary.

A Ph.D. or master thesis summary should encompass the following elements: A title that closely resembles the one used for your thesis The primary objective of your thesis The primary subject of your thesis The research methodologies employed to collect the data The divisions within your thesis Recommendations, findings, and deductions

In essence, a summary should succinctly convey the author's main points in a clear and organized manner. Hence, meticulously analyse the thesis to ascertain the primary and secondary elements or arguments, and succinctly describe them in a structured fashion.

In order to effectively portray the main argument of the author, it is important to offer a brief summary of the thesis that incorporates both the initial and concluding points made by the author. Therefore, it is imperative that you thoroughly comprehend and rephrase the thesis in a more succinct and abbreviated manner.

Guide to Crafting an Executive Summary for a Thesis

It is possible that you have composed a concise thesis that does not exceed ten pages in length. To write a summary thesis, follow these steps:

• Provide a concise summary of each paragraph using a single sentence.
• Provide a concise summary of the entire content in one sentence.
• The text can be summarized in a single paragraph. This paragraph begins with a concise sentence that captures the main idea of the text. Following this, a series of summary sentences provide an overview of the key points discussed in the book.
• Revise and reorganize your paragraph to ensure it is succinct and unambiguous.
• Remove inconsequential and redundant details while incorporating smooth transitions.
• Ensure that the ultimate summary is comprehensive, logical, and cohesive.

Guide to Composing Summaries of Ph.D. Dissertations and Lengthy Texts

Summarizing a lengthy work such as a Ph.D. thesis necessitates a significant amount of time. The reason for this is that one must engage in reading and comprehending the document before to summarizing it. Below are the steps to construct a concise and comprehensive thesis statement for lengthier academic papers.

• Analyse the thesis by dividing it into distinct primary segments. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to categorize the paragraphs that centre around a common subject and thereafter enumerate the corroborating arguments for each part.
• Compose a concise summary for each part, consisting of one or two sentences.
• Compose a concise summary that encapsulates the entirety of the content. Examine the thesis to locate the topic sentence that will provide guidance.
• Compose a single paragraph or multiple paragraphs to initiate the overarching summary statement. Subsequently, provide sentences that succinctly encapsulate certain areas.
• Reorganize and rephrase the paragraphs to make the writing more succinct and understandable, while removing redundant and less significant points. Additionally, ensure that you incorporate transitions throughout your summary.

The ultimate synopsis should encompass the primary corroborating aspects of each notion. Ensure that the final version is logically connected, integrated, and comprehensive.

When is it necessary to include a Summary of Findings in a thesis?

The summary and conclusion thesis fulfils the function of presenting a comprehensive outline of the article. Consequently, pupils are obligated to compose a summary on numerous occasions. Occasionally, an instructor may require students to compose a brief written response following the completion of a reading assignment. In addition, they may be required to provide a summary of their text as a component of their critique or response following the completion of reading a paper.

As part of their research paper writing process, students may choose to include article summaries in their planning or note-taking. The final papers can incorporate these summaries or their components. When composing a research paper, the author can rely on the summary as a point of reference for source materials. A summary allows a writer to succinctly summarize extensive information in order to elucidate and demonstrate the significance of sources that address a related topic.

The opening of a paper can also serve the purpose of summarizing the important topics that will be presented in the body of the text, providing a clear and succinct overview. The optimal length of a summary should be determined by the intricacy and extent of the work. Furthermore, the intended objective of a summary should dictate its length, whether it be a concise few phrases, a brief paragraph, or even multiple paragraphs. It is possible to encounter a thesis summary sample that closely resembles a complete paper.

Characteristics of an Exemplary Summary Thesis Example

When acquiring the skill of composing a summary and conclusion in a thesis, most pupils rely on samples as their guiding references. However, how can you ascertain that you are utilizing an exemplary thesis summary example? These are the desirable attributes to consider:

• Comprehensiveness : An effective summary should encompass all relevant information. It is necessary to extract and record all significant points from the original paragraph in a concise list. The ideas that should comprise the summary are essential for the advancement of the thesis.
• Conciseness : An optimal summary should not have any redundancies. Avoid duplicating the same ideas, especially if they have already been reiterated in the primary document. The summary should be concise yet offer a succinct synopsis of the paper. Hence, it is advisable to refrain from restating the central argument and the supporting concepts.
• Coherence :  An effective summary exhibits logical consistency. It does not resemble a section that has been extracted from the primary document. Furthermore, it is important that the summarized text does not give the impression of being a compilation of disconnected sentences from the original source.
• Independence : When composing a summary, your task is not to replicate the author's style or content. However, it is anticipated that you will demonstrate your unique style and individuality in the summary. Therefore, it is imperative that you should not simply cite the author of the primary material. Instead, articulate your comprehension of the document using your own language. A summary should be derived from your comprehension and analysis of the primary concepts or arguments presented by the writer. However, a well-crafted summary should avoid distorting or misrepresenting information by include criticisms or opinions.

It is important to emphasize that a strong example of a summary thesis employs a format that includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The document includes the objective or aim, findings, and final remarks or suggestions. Furthermore, it incorporates coherent linkages between the provided information without introducing additional data.

To write an exceptional summary, dedicate your efforts to this section subsequent to finalizing your thesis. Ensure that you are directed by the key aspects of your argument. Additionally, utilize a well- crafted executive summary from a thesis sample to provide guidance. The appropriate length of your summary should be determined by its intended function and the overall length of the primary content. After composing the summary, thoroughly review it and remove any mistakes during the process of proofreading and editing . Alternatively, you can request the assistance of our thesis editors to proofread the summary on your behalf.

Access to a wide variety of free tools, research templates, and guidelines can be obtained by visiting our website, which can be found  here . We are always ready to provide you with  comprehensive research guidance  and  project support  in the event that you ever need assistance with writing your research project, review journal, article, or dissertation. At  HAMNIC Solutions , our team of professionals and research experts is always ready to guide you through your research journey.

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Guide On How To Write a Thesis Summary In 2023

So, you just found out that you need to write a thesis summary. In most cases, students who encounter this requirement for the first time start to panic. Frankly, not everyone knows what this thesis summary is. And let’s not forget that most students have no clue how to write one. Don’t worry about it too much though.

What is a thesis summary?

Why use a thesis summary, how to write an effective thesis summary in 2023, master thesis summary example.

A thesis summary is a document that summarizes the points of a longer essay, thesis, or dissertation. Readers will often find a summary to be helpful as it offers a succinct overview of the document’s contents. A Thesis Summary should not be confused with an abstract as they both refer to separate documents that serve different purposes.

The steps involved in writing a Thesis Summary depend on what type of thesis you are summarizing. If you’re summarizing a text-based thesis, then your first step should be to read the Thesis and make note of any major key points and conclusions made by the author(s). You then assemble your notes into one coherent paragraph detailing each one of the major key points. Keep in mind that this initial paragraph will serve as an introduction to your Thesis Summary; therefore, it should not contain the thesis’ main points. Once you’ve completed this step, use these Main Points (identified in your thesis) as a guide for writing the body of your document.

If you’re developing a summary thesis that’s math-related, then you’ll first need to take note of the main conclusions. Second, you must determine how these conclusions were reached by noting each step in the proof. Finally, you’ll have to explain why each step is true using logic statements and definitions from the thesis.

These are the two standard ways to write a thesis summary. However, you can also include your insights, opinions, and comments if you choose.

The steps for writing a ‘ Thesis Summary in 2023’ are just about the same as they’ve always been. They’re pretty much set in stone because this is how students have written thesis summaries for decades.

For both types of thesis summaries, you should include a final paragraph that ties everything together with a brief conclusion. This final paragraph should highlight the key points and conclusions made throughout your document as well as offer a brief statement about why these points matter.

Step 1: Read the Text

The very first thing you’ll want to do is read the entire text. When you’re reading, make note of any major key points and conclusions made by the author(s). If you’re summarizing a text-based thesis, then these major points will form the basis for your introduction paragraph. However, don’t include these points in this introduction.

Step 2: Get to Work

After reading the entire document, it’s time to get started! Begin by taking notes on what you’ve learned from the text and organize them into one coherent paragraph. Make sure that this introduction doesn’t contain the thesis’ main points. Next, use these Main Points (identified in your thesis) as a guide for writing the rest of your thesis summary.

Step 3: Proof it Out

If you’re summarizing a math-related thesis, then you’ll first need to take note of the main conclusions and purposes stated within the document. Next, determine how these conclusions were reached by noting each statement or step in the proof. Finally, complete your Thesis Summary by explaining why each step is true using logical statements and definitions from the thesis.

Step 4: Wrap it Up

Once you’ve finished writing the body of your Thesis Summary, include a final paragraph that ties everything together with a brief conclusion. This final paragraph should highlight the key points and conclusions made throughout your document as well as offer a brief statement about why these points matter.

The best reasons to use a thesis summary are that it will both summarize the relevance of the document and add relevance to an argument. If someone is looking for a specific point or conclusion from the original text, then a Thesis Summary provides them with a quick breakdown of what they can find in the document’s introduction.

You should include a thesis summary in your writings when you believe that there may be too many arguments within your writing. It will help you put together the important points from the different arguments into one concise section.

If you’re summarizing a math-related thesis, they will ensure that you proof every step of the proof given in your paper. It will make sure that you do not miss any details.

There are a few key things that you should keep in mind when writing an effective thesis summary.

• When you’re summarizing a math-related paper, make sure to highlight the main conclusions and how they were arrived at.
• Tell the reader why these conclusions matter by explaining each one with logical statements and definitions from the original document.
• Include a brief conclusion paragraph that ties everything together and highlights the key points covered throughout your work.
• If your thesis is text-based, make sure to include important points throughout the body of your work.
• Last but not least, remember that you are writing a summary so don’t use big words or complex sentence structures! Your goal is to be understood by anyone who reads it in the future.

This Thesis Summary sample is based on a text-based document. Please note, as far as the format and structure are concerned, there’s not much difference between a summary of a bachelor thesis example, an example of a Ph.D. thesis summary, and a thesis chapter summary from a Master thesis summary.

The introduction to the original document should be written as such:

“In this thesis, we’d like to introduce a new framework for understanding how we learn and teach math. The topic of learning and teaching should be the focus of mathematics education.”

Then, point out the main points and conclusions made throughout the body of your work:

“One conclusion that we’ve drawn from our research is that children’s conceptions should be taken into account when designing an appropriate math curriculum for them.”

“A second conclusion that we’ve drawn from our research is that children are more likely to develop their ideas about math if they are encouraged to think critically.”

Finally, make a brief statement about why these points matter using logical statements and definitions from the thesis:

“These conclusions highlight how important it is to focus on children’s conceptions when designing curricula because if we don’t take them into account, we miss out on our student’s potential.”

“These conclusions also show that we need to emphasize critical thinking as a means for children to develop their ideas about math.”

Now, you’ve successfully written an effective thesis summary! Keep in mind that your goal is to highlight the main points and conclusions of the original document as well as boast about their significance. To make this process easier for you, we hope that our tips come in handy.

You should now have a good idea about what a thesis summary or dissertation summary is, why you should use them, and how to write one.

A thesis summary is an overview of the main points and conclusions made in a text-based document or simply put, a summary of the research paper. A Thesis Summary should be included when you believe there are too many arguments within your writing, or if you’re summarizing math-related papers for proofing purposes. Key things to keep in mind while writing one include highlighting important concepts that were previously mentioned, explaining why these new ideas matter with logical statements and definitions from the original work, and providing a brief conclusion paragraph that ties everything together. If you want thesis help with any part of this process from reading or understanding complex texts to organizing them into coherent paragraphs let us know! Our team of thesis writers will be happy to help you complete your thesis summary!

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• How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on 25 September 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 12 May 2023.

Summarising , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

• Read the text
• Break it down into sections
• Identify the key points in each section
• Write the summary
• Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or analysing the source. You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, frequently asked questions.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarise an article or other source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyse or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarising is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

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You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

• Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
• Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
• Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

• Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
• Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
• Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organised into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction, methods, results, and discussion.

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarise this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or research paper, you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

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Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarising many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words.

Save yourself some time with the free summariser.

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarising, and on the purpose of the summary.

With the summariser tool you can easily adjust the length of your summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
• For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
• To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
• In a paper , to summarise or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarise the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarise a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 12). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 21 August 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/how-to-write-a-summary/

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How to write a thesis statement + examples

What is a thesis statement?

Is a thesis statement a question, how do you write a good thesis statement, how do i know if my thesis statement is good, examples of thesis statements, helpful resources on how to write a thesis statement, frequently asked questions about writing a thesis statement, related articles.

A thesis statement is the main argument of your paper or thesis.

The thesis statement is one of the most important elements of any piece of academic writing . It is a brief statement of your paper’s main argument. Essentially, you are stating what you will be writing about.

You can see your thesis statement as an answer to a question. While it also contains the question, it should really give an answer to the question with new information and not just restate or reiterate it.

Your thesis statement is part of your introduction. Learn more about how to write a good thesis introduction in our introduction guide .

A thesis statement is not a question. A statement must be arguable and provable through evidence and analysis. While your thesis might stem from a research question, it should be in the form of a statement.

Tip: A thesis statement is typically 1-2 sentences. For a longer project like a thesis, the statement may be several sentences or a paragraph.

A good thesis statement needs to do the following:

• Condense the main idea of your thesis into one or two sentences.
• Answer your project’s main research question.
• Clearly state your position in relation to the topic .
• Make an argument that requires support or evidence.

Once you have written down a thesis statement, check if it fulfills the following criteria:

• Your statement needs to be provable by evidence. As an argument, a thesis statement needs to be debatable.
• Your statement needs to be precise. Do not give away too much information in the thesis statement and do not load it with unnecessary information.
• Your statement cannot say that one solution is simply right or simply wrong as a matter of fact. You should draw upon verified facts to persuade the reader of your solution, but you cannot just declare something as right or wrong.

As previously mentioned, your thesis statement should answer a question.

If the question is:

What do you think the City of New York should do to reduce traffic congestion?

A good thesis statement restates the question and answers it:

In this paper, I will argue that the City of New York should focus on providing exclusive lanes for public transport and adaptive traffic signals to reduce traffic congestion by the year 2035.

Here is another example. If the question is:

How can we end poverty?

A good thesis statement should give more than one solution to the problem in question:

In this paper, I will argue that introducing universal basic income can help reduce poverty and positively impact the way we work.

• The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina has a list of questions to ask to see if your thesis is strong .

A thesis statement is part of the introduction of your paper. It is usually found in the first or second paragraph to let the reader know your research purpose from the beginning.

In general, a thesis statement should have one or two sentences. But the length really depends on the overall length of your project. Take a look at our guide about the length of thesis statements for more insight on this topic.

Here is a list of Thesis Statement Examples that will help you understand better how to write them.

Every good essay should include a thesis statement as part of its introduction, no matter the academic level. Of course, if you are a high school student you are not expected to have the same type of thesis as a PhD student.

Here is a great YouTube tutorial showing How To Write An Essay: Thesis Statements .

Thesis Summary

Ai generator.

Considering that you have finished writing your thesis, it is high time that you started working on your thesis summary or abstract as the last and final part of your research paper before submitting it to your instructor. Writing an abstract is actually the simplest way for your audience, the teachers and the panel of publishers (if you wish for it to be published) to know what your research paper is about without going through the bulk of your paper.

What is an Abstract?

According to an article found in the Simon Fraser University database, the abstract is deemed a critical part of your thesis and it is presented at the beginning of the thesis, as it is a summary of the whole thesis. The thesis summary is a substantive description of your work read by an external examiner by presenting all the major elements of your work in a highly condensed form.

Size and Structure

Normally, a thesis summary would only contain 120 or less (for undergraduate theses), 150 words (for Masters theses) and 350 words (for a doctoral dissertation).

• For doctoral dissertations, it is best to limit it to only 280 words with a format of one double-spaced page, to preserve visual coherence.
• The structure of the abstract should mirror the structure of the whole thesis, and should represent all its major elements.
• For instance, if your thesis has five chapters (rationale, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion), limit each chapter to only a sentence or two for each chapter in order to maximize some parts that need more substantial backing.

Clearly Specify Your Research Questions

• Research questions are important in making sure that the abstract is coherent and logically structured as they form the backbone to which other elements adhere; they should be presented near the beginning of the abstract.
• Depending on the length of your research paper, there is only room for one to three questions. If there are more than three major research questions in your thesis, try to rearrange them by reducing some to subsidiary status.

Don’t Forget the Results

• One of the most common mistakes in writing abstracts is the failure to indicate the results.
• The primary function of your thesis (and by extension your abstract) is not to tell readers what you did, it is to tell them what you discovered. Other information, such as the account of your research methods, is needed mainly to back the claims you make about your results.
• The final part of your thesis should be about summarizing your results as well as interpreting them.
• Although it is sometimes not necessary, you can choose to add keywords below your abstract as the most important terms that can be found in the thesis.

Listed below are some thesis summary examples:

This study aimed to analyze and identify the most frequent news category and rhetoric of the three local English dailies as well as assess whether they align to the readers’ news preference. These factors served as the sources of the data gathered by the researchers: ninety tertiary students, each local publication’s respective editorial board, and banner stories. Findings indicated that even though the editors would usually select their stories based on impact, the banner story content however focused more on news like crime and politics which are mostly conflict-based issues, instead of human interest stories that readers prefer the most. In conclusion, the respective editorial boards of each publication are not presenting the readers with their main interests in the banner story. Keywords: banner stories, news values, news categories, gatekeeping/gatekeepers, and readers’ preference

An example of a summary format The aim or goal or purpose of this graduation thesis (title) is to … (analyse, characterize, compare, examine, illustrate, present, survey, design, reconstruct) … The graduation thesis is composed of five chapters, each of them dealing with different aspect of … Chapter 1 is introductory and (defines, describes, reviews, deals with) … The chapter is subdivided into two parts. Part 1 describes … and explains … . Part 2 deals with … Chapter 2 examines … . The chapter consists of three parts. Part 1 focuses on … . Part 2 investigates … . Part 3 addresses the issue of … . Chapter 3 is subdivided into two parts and provides an outline of relevant … Part 1 illustrates … . Part 2 looks at … . Chapter 4 concentrates on problems resulting from … Part 1 describes …. Part 2 recommends changes to be made in legislation … Conclusions are drawn in Chapter 5. The main aim of the graduation thesis has been reached. The author suggests that …………………… should be changed/introduced/applied.

The aim of this graduation thesis entitled Development of Yamakawa Technologies to Ascertain the Existence of Cheese on the Moon is to test the use of Yamakawa technologies in ascertaining the existence of cheese on the moon. Yamakawa technologies have been successfully used to test the existence of water in Wakanda, but to date no further applications are known. For this reason the author decided to test further applications, with the aim of describing the technology’s suitability for further development. This thesis first examines the testing procedures for the water in Wakanda experiment, and presents the results. In a second stage several adaptations to Yamakawa for the testing of the existence of cheese on the moon are undertaken. Finally the technology is applied to the question of cheese on the moon, within a six-week testing phase. At the end of each week the testing apparatus is fine tuned, and experiment results are charted every twenty-four hours. The results of the experiment show that Yamakawa technologies are well suited to ascertaining the presence of water in Wakanda, but were unable to be sufficiently modified for the purpose of ascertaining the existence of cheese on the moon. The author recommends further modification to the technology before any other uses are considered.

After writing the said abstract in your research paper, then congratulations! You are now ready to move to the next step of your thesis journey, defending it. Just remember this, always know your thesis by heart. Believe me, if you do, you will not have a hard time and eventually, you will learn to enjoy it too. Good luck!

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

10 Examples of Public speaking

20 Examples of Gas lighting

What is a Thesis Summary and How to Write it?

Table of Contents

Are you unsure of how to write a thesis summary? Well, have a look at this blog post. Especially, for your understanding, here we have explained in detail how to write a brief thesis summary by including all the essential points relevant to the research question. Moreover, we have also shared some important thesis summary writing tips and the qualities of a good summary.

But before jumping to the steps for writing a concise summary for a thesis, first, let us see a quick overview of its definition.

What is a Thesis Summary?

A thesis summary is a highly compact version of a lengthier research paper or a thesis. It mostly highlights the key points based on the content of the whole thesis. In general, both the thesis summary and abstract serve the same objective in the dissertation. Hence, the readers might instantly understand the crux of your academic paper, while just reading the summary. In a nutshell, a summary gives readers a chance to quickly understand what the important contents of an academic paper are.

What to Include in a Thesis Summary?

Are you confused about what to include in the summary of your thesis? Cool! Just take a look below to learn about the components to be added to it.

• Capture the core points as well as the supporting points of your paper. Meanwhile, you may eliminate the less important points and only extract the crux to prepare your thesis.
• Subsequently, try to understand the difference between a thesis summary and an analysis. Probably, an analysis elucidates the techniques, ideas, and significance of a text, while a summary doesn’t critique any idea.
• In short, a summary doesn’t replace analysis, instead, it establishes ideas that need analysis.

Standard Structure of a Thesis Summary

• Firstly, include a title that relates to the theme of your thesis as you ought to attract your readers.
• Secondly, write the purpose of your thesis, so that the audience knows what they have to read.
• Thirdly, present the key topic of your thesis, as the readers need to know the theme of your thesis.
• Lastly, ensure to state your research methods, sub-sections, recommendations, results, and the conclusion of your thesis.

Also, Read – Can a Thesis Statement Be a Question?

Understand How to Write a Thesis Summary

Certainly, a summary depicts the author’s viewpoints directly, so you ought to read the research paper carefully before writing your summary. Also, you need to identify the major and minor elements as well as summarize them systematically. Hence, you ought to read, apprehend, and reconstruct your thesis into a shorter version.

Know How to Write an Executive Summary for a Short Thesis

If your thesis is no longer than ten pages, perhaps you might follow the executive summary structure given below:

• Possibly, you may write a brief of each paragraph that’s included in your thesis.
• Simultaneously, you may develop a brief of the whole text in just one sentence.
• Besides, begin the paragraph using a sentence that briefs the entire text, succeeded by a paragraph of summary sentences.
• Also, restructure and rewrite your paragraph to ensure that your summary is brief and precise.
• Lastly, eliminate repetitive points and try to use transition words as much as possible.

Also, Read – Know How to Cite A Thesis Or Dissertation In APA Format with Examples

Learn How to Write a Summary for Ph.D. Thesis

If you have a long thesis to write, perhaps you ought to spend quality time preparing your thesis. Moreover, time is crucial because you might have to read, apprehend, and document points before you write your summary.

• To illustrate, first, you have to make an outline of your thesis and break it down into various important sections. To clarify, you may select paragraphs discussing similar concepts and enlist the sub-points for each section.
• Simultaneously, summarize each section of your thesis in one or two paragraphs. Also, develop a topic sentence that might summarize the whole text.
• Besides, you may develop one or multiple paragraphs to begin the complete summary sentences. Alternatively, you may use sentences that will summarize the various sections of your thesis.
• Finally, rewrite and rearrange the paragraphs to make the text brief as well as precise and also remove repetitive points. Also, you ought to ensure proper transitions, while developing the summary of your thesis.

Qualities of a Good Thesis Summary

Perhaps, many of you will depend on the internet for samples that might guide you to write a good thesis. However, you may have worries, because you don’t know to differentiate between a good and a bad sample. So, if this is the case, probably we have a list of qualities for you that may help you to choose good samples.

• Comprehensive – If a thesis summary is comprehensive, perhaps it is a good sample. Indeed, each key point plays an important role, hence, all need inclusion in the summary.
• Concise – Besides, your thesis needs to avoid repetition and sound as concisely as possible. Thus, you ought to avoid any kind of repetition in your work and make it precise and clear.
• Coherence – Simultaneously, ensure that all your summary sentences are relevant to your original thesis document and make some sense.
• Independence – Most importantly, make sure to raise your voice and opinions, instead of duplicating the work of the original author. Hence, just quoting the author’s opinion might not fetch you good marks, instead, you have to express it in your own words.

Also Read: 95 Unique Thesis Topics in Information Technology

Thesis Summary Examples

For your better understanding, here, we have shared a few examples of a thesis summary. When it comes to writing a summary for your thesis, you may refer to the examples and summarize your work in the same way.

This thesis employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine the threat posed by the bombing of kindergartens and the possibility of World War II, to provide insight into how these events can be prevented. The main points of this thesis are as follows: an overview of the current threat, an analysis of potential consequences, and recommendations for preventing these events. By offering a thorough overview of the research, this thesis emphasizes the significance of comprehending the relevance of these threats and offers guidance on how to avoid them.

This study looks at the association between social media use and mental health outcomes in young individuals aged 18 to 25. Using a mixed-methods approach, this thesis investigates the relationship between social media use and feelings of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. According to the findings, excessive social media use is connected with higher symptoms of sadness and anxiety, but moderate use is linked to improved social connections and decreased feelings of loneliness. The thesis research indicates that social media use can have both beneficial and negative consequences on mental health, depending on the level and character of interaction. The findings have significance for mental health practitioners, governments, and individuals who want to understand the benefits and risks of social media use.

To effectively communicate the main argument of the thesis with supporting points, it is essential to write a clear and concise thesis summary. So, you may simply follow the guidelines suggested in this blog to come up with a good thesis summary irrespective of its length. In case, you still struggle to compose a summary for your PhD thesis, reach out to us. On our team, we have several well-experienced and qualified thesis writers to assist you in writing a great thesis summary according to your specifications. Mastering the art of summarizing a thesis will help you contribute effectively to the academic conversation and improve your research skills.

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Structure for a summary of a thesis/research paper

When asked for a 15-page summary of the thesis/research paper, should I write it by chapter (Introduction, Methodology, etc) ?

The only guideline given is to include introduction, research objectives, methodology, etc. But no specific format was given.

The summary was a requirement for a colloquium.

• academic-writing

• 4 Welcome to Writers. We have some people who know more about academic writing than I do, but I'll ask the obvious question: Does your school or department have any guidance on this, like a style sheet or a style guide you follow? –  Goodbye Stack Exchange Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 15:51
• Probably more suited for: academia.stackexchange.com –  Therac Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 16:41

3 Answers 3

It actually depends on the field you are working on, but here are a few general pointers.

If done right, your thesis probably looks like this:

Chapter 1. Introduction, in particular motivation, i.e. why you're working on that particular topic, What applications are there for your invention or your ideas, why is it relevant for society, for your institution, for your readership; what your expectations were when you started working on it, whether you achieved what you expected.

Chapter 2. Basics, i.e. an introduction to the main topic, in particular all the knowledge your readers require to even understand the rest of the thesis.

Chapters 3 – 10. Your actual dissertation. Probably these chapters are more or less independent from each other, so each chapter will replicate the general structure of the thesis within the chapter; i.e. the chapter starts explaining why the topic of the chapter is necessary, then you introduce the basic concepts, then you introduce and develop your contribution (i.e. discuss your novel ideas, or introduce your new invention, explain how you developed it, what methods you used, etc). Then you prove that your contribution is sound and why it is worth publishing it. Finally, you summarise what you have done in the chapter and maybe already explain why the next chapter is necessary.

Chapter 11. The final evaluation of all the new concepts and ideas (your contribution). Here's where you put everything into perspective and formally prove that your whole work is worth something.

Chapter 12. The big conclusion. First, you briefly summarise Chapter 1, then you briefly list the most important achievements and conclusions of Chapters 3 – 10; then, you summarise Chapter 11. Finally, you provide an outlook. What will future work look like, or what will the impact of your thesis be.

Now, if you have to summarise all this, this is what you do:

Chapter 1 . Keep most of it, if not all of it. The audience wants to understand why they should keep reading a 15-page summary or your whole thesis.

Chapter 2 . Skip completely, unless you fear that what's to come can't be understood without a few basics. In that case, include only the most necessary stuff.

Chapters 3 – 10. For each chapter, your summary should include the chapter's introduction and motivation, a brief summary of your contribution, but not the details that nobody is going to understand anyway. You have probably worked on this for years. It may all be crystal clear to you, but for people seeing it for the first time, it may be very complex. Keep it simple and concentrate more on the relevance of the results than on how exactly you achieved them.

Chapters 11 - 12. Include only the things that prove that your work has relevance and how it will impact the audience.

Final remark: In general, make summaries easy to read and understand. You might even consider using a bullet list instead of proper prosa.

• What would be the possible title of chapter 2? –  Mohammad Commented Apr 24, 2018 at 17:32

Putting section-titles will help give your summary structure so you can focus on summarizing different aspects in different subjects. Just remember that a summary is supposed to be short and very broad, using only relevant information.

Think of your audience.

Your summary should serve as a brief introduction into and overview of your research. The purpose of that summary is to allow your audience to understand your research, discuss it with you, and give you helpful feedback.

Just condensing your dissertation may not help them with their task of helping you.

What I would do is create an interesting narrative. Look at some TED talks to give you an idea what that might entail. Generally, it begins with a very brief (one to a few sentences) summary of what you research, goes on to explain why you research this (i.e. why is this important and to whom), then you explain how you research it, but keep your explanations general and avoid jargon, to that an intelligent non-expert can understand it (imagine that you write for the New York Times), and finally you explain the problems that you currently face and ask your audience for ideas in how to solve them.

That is, on every level of your narrative you draw your audience in. First you make your research relevant to them. Then you explain it in a non-boring way, then you ask them to get thinking about how to do it better.

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Article Summaries, Reviews & Critiques

Writing an article summary.

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When writing a summary, the goal is to compose a concise and objective overview of the original article. The summary should focus only on the article's main ideas and important details that support those ideas.

Guidelines for summarizing an article:

• State the main ideas.
• Identify the most important details that support the main ideas.
• Summarize in your own words.
• Do not copy phrases or sentences unless they are being used as direct quotations.
• Express the underlying meaning of the article, but do not critique or analyze.
• The summary should be about one third the length of the original article. 

Your summary should include:

• Give an overview of the article, including the title and the name of the author.
• Provide a thesis statement that states the main idea of the article.
• Use the body paragraphs to explain the supporting ideas of your thesis statement.
• One-paragraph summary - one sentence per supporting detail, providing 1-2 examples for each.
• Multi-paragraph summary - one paragraph per supporting detail, providing 2-3 examples for each.
• Start each paragraph with a topic sentence.
• Use transitional words and phrases to connect ideas.
• Summarize your thesis statement and the underlying meaning of the article.

 Adapted from "Guidelines for Using In-Text Citations in a Summary (or Research Paper)" by Christine Bauer-Ramazani, 2020

Additional Resources

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How to Write a Summary - Guide & Examples  (from Scribbr.com)

Writing a Summary  (from The University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center)

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Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements

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Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing:

• An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
• An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
• An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided.

If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader.

2. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

3. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper.

4. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

Thesis Statement Examples

Example of an analytical thesis statement:

The paper that follows should:

• Explain the analysis of the college admission process
• Explain the challenge facing admissions counselors

Example of an expository (explanatory) thesis statement:

• Explain how students spend their time studying, attending class, and socializing with peers

Example of an argumentative thesis statement:

• Present an argument and give evidence to support the claim that students should pursue community projects before entering college

How to Write a Thesis Summary in a Clear and Concise Manner

Mar 21, 2023 | 0 comments

Mar 21, 2023 | Blog | 0 comments

Writing a thesis summary is essential in completing your research paper, dissertation, or PhD thesis. A thesis summary is a highly condensed version of your thesis, providing a brief overview of the main points of your thesis. Writing a good thesis summary requires the ability to summarize the entire text coherently and logically. In this article, we will provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to write a summary of a thesis that highlights the key points of your thesis. We will also answer some frequently asked questions related to thesis summaries and provide a thesis summary example to illustrate the steps for writing a good summary.

So, let’s get started.

Table of Contents

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Step 1: Read the Thesis

Step 1 in writing a clear and concise thesis summary involves reading the entire thesis carefully, taking notes, highlighting important sections, and marking any questions. Understanding the author’s argument, abstract, research questions, methodology, conclusions, and recommendations is crucial. It’s also important to understand the author’s writing style and tone and use their words and phrases to highlight the most important points in the summary. A comprehensive understanding of the work can be obtained by thoroughly reading the thesis, which is necessary to create a summary that accurately reflects the author’s ideas while being concise and easy to understand for the reader.

Step 2: Highlight the Main Points

Step two in writing a clear and concise thesis summary is to highlight the main points of the thesis. This step involves identifying the thesis statement or main argument of the thesis and the supporting points that the author uses to develop and support their argument. You should also highlight any research questions, methods used, and conclusions made by the author. By focusing on the main points, you can avoid including unnecessary details and create a concise summary that focuses on the most important information. It’s essential to avoid including minor details, anecdotes, or examples that do not contribute significantly to the author’s argument. Highlighting the main points will help you create an outline for your summary and ensure that you cover all the essential information comprehensively and logically.

Step 3: Write a Single Sentence Thesis Statement

The third step in summarizing a thesis is to write a single-sentence thesis statement that conveys the thesis’s main argument or central idea. This statement should be concise and specific, using key concepts and themes related to the main argument and supporting points identified in the previous step. It should not be confused with a topic sentence . Instead, it should summarize the entire thesis and provide an overview of the main points while demonstrating the summarizer tool to understand the text. Writing a thesis statement helps to create a roadmap for the rest of the summary and ensures that it accurately reflects the author’s work.

Step 4: Write an Overview of the Main Points

Step 4 involves writing an overview of the main points of the thesis. This section should concisely summarise the key ideas and supporting arguments presented in the thesis. The overview should begin with a restatement of the thesis statement and then proceed to summarize the main points in the order in which they were presented in the thesis.

To ensure that your overview accurately reflects the author’s work, it is important to use your own words and avoid copying phrases or sentences from the original text. This will also help you to condense the information and make it easier to read and understand.

In writing the overview, it is important to highlight the most important points and supporting arguments while avoiding unnecessary details. This will help you to create a comprehensive but coherent summary of the entire thesis.

Step 5: Include Important Supporting Points

Step 5 in summarizing a thesis involves including the important supporting points. This step is critical to developing a comprehensive and well-structured summary. Supporting points are ideas, evidence, or examples that help to explain and support the thesis statement. These points should be significant and relevant to the main argument of the thesis. To identify the supporting points, it’s important to review the thesis carefully and look for evidence, arguments, and examples that the author uses to support their main argument. Once you have identified these points, you can include them in your summary, providing enough context and detail to help the reader understand their significance. By including the important supporting points in your summary, you can help the reader to understand the author’s argument and how they arrived at their conclusions. It also helps to provide evidence for the thesis statement and demonstrates that you understand the text well.

Step 6: Conclude with a Comprehensive and Coherent Summary

The final step in creating a thesis summary involves concluding it with a comprehensive and coherent summary that accurately represents the author’s work. This requires including all essential information from the thesis, ensuring the summary is organized logically and contradictions-free. Additionally, the summary should be concise and avoid unnecessary details while providing a critical evaluation of the thesis. By doing so, you can demonstrate your ability to analyze and interpret complex academic texts while contributing to the academic conversation.

What is the Structure of a Thesis Summary?

The structure of a thesis summary typically includes an introduction, a brief overview of the research methods used, a summary of the key findings and results, and a conclusion.

• Introduction: The introduction should provide a brief overview of the thesis, including the topic, research questions, and main argument. It should also provide context for the work and explain the importance of the research.
• Research Methods: In this section, the author should describe the research methods used to conduct the study, including the research design, data collection methods, and analysis techniques. The author should also explain why these methods were chosen and how they contribute to the research.
• Key Findings and Results: This section should summarise the main findings and results of the study. It should highlight the most important results and explain how they support the thesis argument. The author should also discuss any limitations of the study and suggest areas for future research.
• Conclusion: The conclusion should provide a final overview of the thesis and its contributions to the field. The author should restate the main argument and summarize the key findings and results. The conclusion should also critically evaluate the work and discuss its implications for future research.

It’s important to note that the structure of a thesis summary may vary depending on the academic institution’s requirements or publication. However, the above structure is a common framework that can be used as a guide for writing a clear and concise thesis summary.

What are the Qualities of a Good Thesis Summary?

A good thesis summary possesses qualities that effectively convey the author’s main argument and supporting points to the reader.

• Comprehensiveness: A good thesis summary should be comprehensive enough to capture all the essential information from the thesis, including the main argument, supporting points, research questions, methods used, and conclusions made by the author. This ensures that the reader gets a full picture of the author’s work and can understand the author’s point of view.
• Conciseness: While a good thesis summary should be comprehensive, it should also be concise. This means the summary should avoid unnecessary details or information that do not contribute significantly to the author’s argument. A concise summary is easier to read and understand, ensuring that the reader remains engaged throughout the summary.
• Coherence: A good thesis summary should be coherent and well-organized, with each point building upon the previous one. This ensures that the summary is logical and easy to follow, and it helps the reader understand the author’s argument clearly and concisely. A coherent summary demonstrates the writer’s ability to analyze and interpret complex academic texts.
• Independence: A good thesis summary should be independent of the writer’s opinions or biases. It should present the author’s work objectively and accurately, without any personal interpretation or evaluation. This ensures the summary is credible and trustworthy, allowing the reader to form opinions based on the author’s work.

Thesis Summary Example #1:

The bombing of kindergartens and the potential of WWIII threatens the world’s peaceful future. Through quantitative and qualitative research methods, this study analyzes the threat of these events and provides insight into how they can be prevented. The main points of this thesis include an overview of the current threat, an analysis of the potential consequences, and recommendations for preventing these events. By providing a comprehensive overview of the research, this thesis highlights the importance of understanding the relevance of these threats and provides a guide on how to avoid them.

Thesis Summary Example #2

In her thesis, “The Effects of Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health,” Smith explores the relationship between social media usage and mental health among adolescents. Through a literature review and empirical study, she finds that excessive social media use can lead to negative outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. She also identifies factors that can mitigate these effects, including parental involvement and positive online interactions. Smith’s research highlights the need for further education and intervention strategies to promote healthy adolescent social media use. Her thesis provides valuable insights into the complex relationship between social media and mental health and offers practical recommendations for parents, educators, and mental health professionals.

Get Help With Your Thesis Summary

Are you struggling with writing an effective thesis summary? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Our team of expert writers is here to provide you with the assistance you need. Whether you need help crafting a concise and compelling summary or refining an existing one, our experienced professionals will ensure that your thesis summary accurately reflects the essence of your research. Don’t hesitate to place your order today by clicking the “ORDER NOW” button above and receive top-notch writing help from our experts.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, writing a thesis summary clearly and concisely is crucial for effectively communicating a thesis’s main argument and supporting points. Following the steps outlined in this article, including reading the thesis carefully, highlighting key points, creating a thesis statement, including supporting points, and concluding with a comprehensive summary, one can create a well-organized and informative summary. It is important to remember that a thesis summary should be written in your own words and should accurately reflect the author’s work. By mastering the art of summarizing a thesis, one can contribute to the academic conversation and enhance their research skills.

FAQs on Thesis Summary

What is a thesis summary.

A thesis summary is a highly condensed version of your thesis that provides a brief overview of the main points of your thesis.

Why is a thesis summary important?

A thesis summary is a highly condensed version of a research paper or dissertation that provides an overview of the main points and insights gained from the research.

How do I write a good thesis summary?

To write a good thesis summary, read the thesis carefully, highlight the main points, write a single-sentence thesis statement, write an overview of the main points, include important supporting points, and conclude with a comprehensive and coherent summary.

Should a thesis summary be longer than ten pages?

No, a thesis summary should be highly condensed and not exceed a single paragraph of summary sentences.

What should a good thesis summary include?

A good thesis summary should include important supporting points, a clear thesis statement, an overview of the main points, and insight gained from the research.

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How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Conclusion

Published on September 6, 2022 by Tegan George and Shona McCombes. Revised on November 20, 2023.

The conclusion is the very last part of your thesis or dissertation . It should be concise and engaging, leaving your reader with a clear understanding of your main findings, as well as the answer to your research question .

In it, you should:

• Clearly state the answer to your main research question
• Summarize and reflect on your research process
• Make recommendations for future work on your thesis or dissertation topic
• Show what new knowledge you have contributed to your field
• Wrap up your thesis or dissertation

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Table of contents

Discussion vs. conclusion, how long should your conclusion be, step 1: answer your research question, step 2: summarize and reflect on your research, step 3: make future recommendations, step 4: emphasize your contributions to your field, step 5: wrap up your thesis or dissertation, full conclusion example, conclusion checklist, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about conclusion sections.

While your conclusion contains similar elements to your discussion section , they are not the same thing.

Your conclusion should be shorter and more general than your discussion. Instead of repeating literature from your literature review , discussing specific research results , or interpreting your data in detail, concentrate on making broad statements that sum up the most important insights of your research.

As a rule of thumb, your conclusion should not introduce new data, interpretations, or arguments.

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Depending on whether you are writing a thesis or dissertation, your length will vary. Generally, a conclusion should make up around 5–7% of your overall word count.

An empirical scientific study will often have a short conclusion, concisely stating the main findings and recommendations for future research. A humanities dissertation topic or systematic review , on the other hand, might require more space to conclude its analysis, tying all the previous sections together in an overall argument.

Your conclusion should begin with the main question that your thesis or dissertation aimed to address. This is your final chance to show that you’ve done what you set out to do, so make sure to formulate a clear, concise answer.

• Don’t repeat a list of all the results that you already discussed
• Do synthesize them into a final takeaway that the reader will remember.

An empirical thesis or dissertation conclusion may begin like this:

A case study –based thesis or dissertation conclusion may begin like this:

In the second example, the research aim is not directly restated, but rather added implicitly to the statement. To avoid repeating yourself, it is helpful to reformulate your aims and questions into an overall statement of what you did and how you did it.

Your conclusion is an opportunity to remind your reader why you took the approach you did, what you expected to find, and how well the results matched your expectations.

To avoid repetition , consider writing more reflectively here, rather than just writing a summary of each preceding section. Consider mentioning the effectiveness of your methodology , or perhaps any new questions or unexpected insights that arose in the process.

You can also mention any limitations of your research, but only if you haven’t already included these in the discussion. Don’t dwell on them at length, though—focus on the positives of your work.

• While x limits the generalizability of the results, this approach provides new insight into y .
• This research clearly illustrates x , but it also raises the question of y .

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You may already have made a few recommendations for future research in your discussion section, but the conclusion is a good place to elaborate and look ahead, considering the implications of your findings in both theoretical and practical terms.

• Based on these conclusions, practitioners should consider …
• To better understand the implications of these results, future studies could address …
• Further research is needed to determine the causes of/effects of/relationship between …

When making recommendations for further research, be sure not to undermine your own work. Relatedly, while future studies might confirm, build on, or enrich your conclusions, they shouldn’t be required for your argument to feel complete. Your work should stand alone on its own merits.

Just as you should avoid too much self-criticism, you should also avoid exaggerating the applicability of your research. If you’re making recommendations for policy, business, or other practical implementations, it’s generally best to frame them as “shoulds” rather than “musts.” All in all, the purpose of academic research is to inform, explain, and explore—not to demand.

Make sure your reader is left with a strong impression of what your research has contributed to the state of your field.

Some strategies to achieve this include:

• Returning to your problem statement to explain how your research helps solve the problem
• Referring back to the literature review and showing how you have addressed a gap in knowledge
• Discussing how your findings confirm or challenge an existing theory or assumption

Again, avoid simply repeating what you’ve already covered in the discussion in your conclusion. Instead, pick out the most important points and sum them up succinctly, situating your project in a broader context.

The end is near! Once you’ve finished writing your conclusion, it’s time to wrap up your thesis or dissertation with a few final steps:

• It’s a good idea to write your abstract next, while the research is still fresh in your mind.
• Next, make sure your reference list is complete and correctly formatted. To speed up the process, you can use our free APA citation generator .
• Once you’ve added any appendices , you can create a table of contents and title page .
• Finally, read through the whole document again to make sure your thesis is clearly written and free from language errors. You can proofread it yourself , ask a friend, or consider Scribbr’s proofreading and editing service .

Here is an example of how you can write your conclusion section. Notice how it includes everything mentioned above:

V. Conclusion

The current research aimed to identify acoustic speech characteristics which mark the beginning of an exacerbation in COPD patients.

The central questions for this research were as follows: 1. Which acoustic measures extracted from read speech differ between COPD speakers in stable condition and healthy speakers? 2. In what ways does the speech of COPD patients during an exacerbation differ from speech of COPD patients during stable periods?

All recordings were aligned using a script. Subsequently, they were manually annotated to indicate respiratory actions such as inhaling and exhaling. The recordings of 9 stable COPD patients reading aloud were then compared with the recordings of 5 healthy control subjects reading aloud. The results showed a significant effect of condition on the number of in- and exhalations per syllable, the number of non-linguistic in- and exhalations per syllable, and the ratio of voiced and silence intervals. The number of in- and exhalations per syllable and the number of non-linguistic in- and exhalations per syllable were higher for COPD patients than for healthy controls, which confirmed both hypotheses.

However, the higher ratio of voiced and silence intervals for COPD patients compared to healthy controls was not in line with the hypotheses. This unpredicted result might have been caused by the different reading materials or recording procedures for both groups, or by a difference in reading skills. Moreover, there was a trend regarding the effect of condition on the number of syllables per breath group. The number of syllables per breath group was higher for healthy controls than for COPD patients, which was in line with the hypothesis. There was no effect of condition on pitch, intensity, center of gravity, pitch variability, speaking rate, or articulation rate.

This research has shown that the speech of COPD patients in exacerbation differs from the speech of COPD patients in stable condition. This might have potential for the detection of exacerbations. However, sustained vowels rarely occur in spontaneous speech. Therefore, the last two outcome measures might have greater potential for the detection of beginning exacerbations, but further research on the different outcome measures and their potential for the detection of exacerbations is needed due to the limitations of the current study.

Checklist: Conclusion

I have clearly and concisely answered the main research question .

I have summarized my overall argument or key takeaways.

I have mentioned any important limitations of the research.

I have given relevant recommendations .

I have clearly explained what my research has contributed to my field.

I have  not introduced any new data or arguments.

You've written a great conclusion! Use the other checklists to further improve your dissertation.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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In a thesis or dissertation, the discussion is an in-depth exploration of the results, going into detail about the meaning of your findings and citing relevant sources to put them in context.

The conclusion is more shorter and more general: it concisely answers your main research question and makes recommendations based on your overall findings.

While it may be tempting to present new arguments or evidence in your thesis or disseration conclusion , especially if you have a particularly striking argument you’d like to finish your analysis with, you shouldn’t. Theses and dissertations follow a more formal structure than this.

All your findings and arguments should be presented in the body of the text (more specifically in the discussion section and results section .) The conclusion is meant to summarize and reflect on the evidence and arguments you have already presented, not introduce new ones.

For a stronger dissertation conclusion , avoid including:

• Important evidence or analysis that wasn’t mentioned in the discussion section and results section
• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion …”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g., “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation shouldn’t take up more than 5–7% of your overall word count.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation should include the following:

• A restatement of your research question
• A summary of your key arguments and/or results
• A short discussion of the implications of your research

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George, T. & McCombes, S. (2023, November 20). How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Conclusion. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/write-conclusion/

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How to Write a Summary

Last Updated: July 26, 2024 Approved

Sample Summaries

Reviewing the piece, writing the summary in your own words, revising your draft into a coherent summary, expert q&a.

This article was co-authored by Richard Perkins . Richard Perkins is a Writing Coach, Academic English Coordinator, and the Founder of PLC Learning Center. With over 24 years of education experience, he gives teachers tools to teach writing to students and works with elementary to university level students to become proficient, confident writers. Richard is a fellow at the National Writing Project. As a teacher leader and consultant at California State University Long Beach's Global Education Project, Mr. Perkins creates and presents teacher workshops that integrate the U.N.'s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the K-12 curriculum. He holds a BA in Communications and TV from The University of Southern California and an MEd from California State University Dominguez Hills. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 26 testimonials and 90% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 1,832,166 times.

Writing a summary is a great way to process the information you read, whether it’s an article or a book. If you’re assigned a summary in school, the best way to approach it is by reviewing the piece you’re summarizing. Read it thoroughly and take notes on the major points you want to include in your summary. When you get to writing your summary, rely on your memory first to make sure the summary is in your own words. Then, revise it to ensure that your writing is clear and the grammar, punctuation, and spelling are all perfect.

How do you write a good summary?

Start by reviewing the piece and identifying what the major points of it are. Highlight the author and the name of their work first, and then try to recall all of the major plot points from memory. Tighten up your draft by ensuring that your content is in chronological order, and by checking for errors or repetition.

• The author might also state their thesis more plainly by saying something like "my argument is...." or I believe...
• In a fiction piece, the author will more likely emphasize themes. So if you notice that love - discussions or descriptions of it, for example - come up a lot, one of the main points of the piece is probably love.

• To put something in your own words, write it down as if you were explaining or describing it to a friend. In that case, you wouldn't just read what the author wrote. Do the same when you're writing down the major points in your own words.

• For fiction pieces, this means avoiding rewriting every single thing that happens in the piece. Focus instead on the major plot points and the main motivator for those points. Don't include everything that happens to the character along the way.

• For example, you can start with something like “George Shaw’s '‘Pygmalion’' is a play that addresses issues of class and culture in early twentieth-century England.”

• If you absolutely must use the original author’s words, put them in quotation marks. This tells your reader those words aren’t yours. Not doing this is academic plagiarism, and it can get you in a lot of trouble.
• Make sure you format the quote correctly!

• For example, you might think that Hamlet spends a lot of time thinking and not a lot of time acting. You can say something like, "Hamlet is a man of thought, rather than action," instead of saying, "Why doesn't Hamlet do something once in a while?"

• In fiction pieces, you can say something like "Shakespeare's Hamlet then spends a lot of time brooding on the castle ramparts." This tells your reader you're talking about Shakespeare's play, not inventing your own story.

• For example, in a summary of an article about the cause of the American Revolution, you might have a paragraph that summarizes the author's arguments about taxes, and another about religious freedom. You can say something like, "Although some colonists believed that taxes should entitle them to representation in Parliament, the author also argues that other colonists supported the Revolution because they believed they were entitled to representation in heaven on their own terms."

• Don't use spell-checker for spelling errors. It will catch if you spell something wrong, but not if you use the wrong spelling of a word. For example, it won't catch that you used "there" when you meant "their."

• Generally, a summary should be around one quarter the length of the original piece. So if the original piece is 4 pages long, your summary should be no more than 1 page. [13] X Research source

• Not only should they be comparing your work for accuracy, ask them to read it for flow and summation. They should be able understand what happened in the article or story by reading your summary alone. Don't hesitate to ask for criticism; then weigh those criticisms and make valid changes.

• If you notice an author has made the same point multiple times, though, it’s a good indicator that this is an important point, and it should definitely be in your summary. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Start your summary out with where the story takes place, or something that is on the first page or in the first chapter.
• Look at the chapter title of the book.This might help summarize the chapter as you start working on your summary.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/comprehension/authorsmainidea.pdf
• ↑ Richard Perkins. Writing Coach & Academic English Coordinator. Expert Interview. 1 September 2021.
• ↑ http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/engl0310/summaryhints.htm
• ↑ https://public.wsu.edu/~mejia/Summary.htm
• ↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Guidelines-for-Writing-a-Summary

About This Article

Before you write a summary, read the piece you’re summarizing, then make notes on what you think the main point and major supporting arguments are. When you’re ready to draft your summary, start with the author and title, then use your own words to write what you think the author’s main point is in each section. Be sure to focus on what the author thinks and feels rather than what you do! Finally, reread your summary and check it for good spelling, punctuation, and grammar. For more suggestions from our reviewer about polishing your summary and improving transitions, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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