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I enjoyed Kroll’s point in “Arguing Differently” that the paper can start out with “a respectful summary of the opponent’s viewpoint” (41). I think this mainly revolved around the “respect,” recognizing that the opposite side comes from some place (maybe including some historical facts on how that “side” began). The third area of argument that Kroll talked about spurned a lot of thought about teaching composition. As my students struggle with their thesis statement, I see that the hardest thing for them is what I call the “so what?” Why would someone read your paper? If you do answer (and presumably you will in your successful paper) your research question, what does knowing that answer matter? Does it do something for the reader? If so, what? Does it inform about the book, about character development, reception? Why is your question worth knowing the answer to?

I can relate to their struggle, as I too went through this when writing for a prompt in school: the “so what?” is because it was assigned, so X instructor must want to know what you know about it. But, now that I do my own research, I find that the “so what?” is usually the germ for my research question. Maybe in the future I will teach my thesis/topic backward. “So what?” first, question next, topic (which will in this case become “key words” to use in research), then developed thesis statement (instead of the hypothesis, topic, question, “so what?” that I was always taught in school and continue to poorly teach to students). I feel like I should be making notes about this somewhere for my revised Eng 1000 syllabus….