9 Mapping/Outlining – Common Mistakes

Let’s think about a common mistake that students make when writing thesis statements. Look at the thesis statement below. What is the problem with it?

It is important for teachers to be kind and friendly.

The problem with this thesis statement is that the two subtopics (“kind” and “friendly”) are too similar. This makes it sound very repetitive, and more importantly, a thesis like this will make it more difficult to complete your essay. Being kind and being friendly are very similar, so it would be difficult to think of four different supporting sentences for your essay.

It is also common for students to make mistakes with supporting sentences when they are starting out. Let’s look at a pair of supporting sentences. Think about how they could be improved.

Mistake 1

Supporting Sentence 1: First, teachers must be empathetic to all students.

Supporting Sentence 2: Second, teachers must understand their students’ feelings.

Do you see the problem? Just like in the thesis statement above, we have two ideas that are too similar to each other. Being empathetic and understanding others’ feelings are basically the same ideas. Your body paragraph would sound too repetitive if you used these supporting sentences.

Let’s look at another example. This time, we will look at a topic sentence and two supporting sentences.

Mistake 2

Topic Sentence 1:  Teachers must incorporate fun into their classrooms.

Supporting Sentence 1: First, it is important for teachers to play games with their students.

Supporting Sentence 2: Second, effective teachers always have an organized schedule.

Do you see the problem? In this case, the problem is supporting sentence 2. Our topic sentence is about fun, so both of the supporting sentences should be about this topic. However, the second supporting sentence is about being organized. It does not match the topic sentence idea.

There is one more example that we should consider. See if you can find any mistakes in the outline below:

Mistake 3

Topic Sentence 1:  Teachers must incorporate fun into their classrooms.

Supporting Sentence 1: First, it is important for teachers to play games with their students.

Supporting Sentence 2: Teachers should make jokes when it is appropriate.

This mistake might have been more difficult to find. The problem is that we are missing a transition word at the beginning of our second supporting sentence. Since we use “first” in the first supporting sentence, adding “second” would be a good choice: “Second, teachers should make jokes when appropriate.