What makes for a great thesis?

Ultimately, it is the quality of the thesis that sets apart good essays from great ones. An essay that meets the requirements of a sound argument that has been articulated coherently in correct language should typically be a good essay or maybe even a very good one. 

However, a good essay graduates to greatness only if it has a compelling thesis.

A compelling thesis is one that is provocative in intent and is worded in clear and crispy language. 'Provocative' means that the position it expresses on the topic is a healthy combination of fact and opinion: more precisely, a fact-enriched stance.  

'Provocative' doesn't at all imply an eccentric or incendiary stance. At any rate, in the examination setting, you should not risk a controversial thesis statement. 

'Provocative' as I use it here simply means that you should walk the rope between fact and opinion in such a way that your thesis sounds neither completely agreeable to everyone, nor entirely disagreeable. Indeed, it is the hallmark of a robust thesis that the 'disagreeable' element arouse the curiosity of the reader in a favourable way.     

Further, a great thesis does not compromise on clarity. But clarity doesn't necessarily mean being familiar and self-evident. In fact, if a thesis is too factual, it may lose its 'provocation'. The clarity in question refers to the freedom from unintended interpretations. The core stance presented in the essay should for all its expressive sophistication have a singular propositional meaning.  

In brief, a great thesis goes beyond simply being correct, clear and crisp. These qualities are indispensable but what makes the thesis great is the quality of the articulated opinion embodied in it.      

Why transitions matter

Transition words or connectors within as well as between sentences are an essential component of any composition. Without these verbal signals, a text may lose its defining feature: textuality. 

Verbal ties bind the text together by creating bonds of meaning.  A sequence of sentences that lacks appropriate connecters may not properly hang together. Consider sequence A (below). 

While the first sentence in A presents a positive achievement of the PTI government, the second sentence abruptly switches to one of its weaknesses. 

Similarly, in B, the first of the two sentences mentions a praiseworthy quality, but the immediately following statement veers off into a sharply critical direction. 

In both examples (A and B), the common problem is the absence of an appropriate cue or signal that would indicate to the reader how they should navigate from sentence to sentence. 

As a result, the integrity or intactness of the text is undermined and the overall impact that the writer may hope to cast on the reader is compromised.  

Here's another version of the same passage with all appropriate transition words tucked into place. 

If you compare the first version with the second, you will observe a significant improvement in coherence and bonding among sentences. 

Translation hacks

Translation is difficult work. It is conceptually demanding, linguistically technical and culturally sensitive. That said, at the examination level, you can pull it off with the help of a few hacks. 

First of all, highlight the Urdu phrases that you know can be rendered in English as full phrases. Render them in English. Often idioms and proverbs find a good match in the target language. 

There may be chunks in the original text that for cultural or linguistic reasons may have to be suppressed in the English translation. Conversely, there could be ideas or segments of thought that are implicit that will have to be made explicit in the target language.   

Next, do a sentence-by-sentence analysis of tense. e.g. in the passage below, the first two sentences are in the present simple, while the third statement being a complex sentence includes one clause in in the present perfect and one in the present simple. 

سکون کا حصول شادی کے اہم ترین فوائد میں سے ایک ہے۔شوہر اور بیوی کا ساتھ رہنا کسی بھی فرد کے لیے مسرت، سکون،آرام اور اندرونی توازن پانے کا بہترین ذریعہ ہے ۔ بلکہ بہت ساری تحقیقات نے ثابت بھی کیا ہے کہ شادی شدہ افراد غیر شادی شدہ افراد کے مقابلے میں جرائم میں کم مبتلا ہوتے ہیں کیونکہ شادی خود پر کنٹرول حاصل کرنے میں ان کے لیے معاون ثابت ہوتی ہے۔ اللہ کے رسولﷺ نے جناب خدیجہ ؓ سے شادی کر کے سکون اور تحفظ کا احساس حاصل کیا کیونکہ وہ مشکل ترین وقت میں ان کے لیے بہترین رفیق ثابت ہوئیں۔  جناب ِ خدیجہ ؓ نے اس وقت ان کو سکون اور تسلی فراہم کی جب وحی کا نزول آپﷺ کو قدرے مضطرب کر رہا تھا۔

This move alone will give you a firm handle to accomplish the translation task as it will close many loose ends in your mind. 

One last thing: connectors or transition phrases rarely carry over from one language to another, even when they are semantically equivalent (e.g. the functional scope of 'therefore' and چنانچہ is not identical, despite their literal correspondence of meaning). And so, one has to be careful in their use. It is possible that in two adjacent English sentences, a causal sequence may have been set up in such a way that consequence is conveyed in the latter sentence without an explicit 'therefore'. However, the Urdu translation may require a proper چنانچہ !