Using AI To Test Your Thesis Statement
Barry Mauer and John Venecek
We discuss the following topics on this page:
We also provide the following activities:
Introduction
In the previous section, we explored foundational elements of crafting effective statements, including strategies for formulating a clear position and identifying the hallmarks of a strong, persuasive thesis. In this section, we will turn our attention to how AI can serve as a dynamic tool for evaluating and enhancing the quality of your thesis. We will discuss how to prompt AI to test the strength of your claims, challenge your statement, generate alternative versions, and create more provocative, nuanced statements that are arguable, assertive, and complex.
Crafting a strong thesis statement is an ongoing process shaped by the insights and discoveries that emerge from your research. Rather than a one-time task that you do once and move on from, your thesis should evolve and increase in precision and complexity as your understanding of your topic deepens. Yet, this is a skill, even an artform, that is a challenge for many students. This is where AI can be both an effective tool and an invaluable companion. AI can assist in refining and stress-testing your statement as well as enhancing the clarity, complexity, assertiveness, and overall strength of your claim.
The first step in this process is to craft a purposeful prompt that communicates our intentions to copilot. This will empower you to direct, positioning AI as an active, creative, and critical collaborator that can help elevate your ideas and guide you toward stronger results.
Strengthening the Thesis Statement with AI
Let’s start with a basic statement that we want to strengthen and make more compelling:
“James Baldwin uses jazz music in ‘Sonny’s Blues’ as a vehicle for expressing and confronting the suffering and complex identity of African Americans within the context of 1950s Harlem.”
This is a basic statement that anyone familiar with “Sonny’s Blues” might formulate. However, our goal is to move beyond surface-level claims and develop a thesis that brings nuance and originality to the scholarly conversation surrounding Baldwin’s work. Before we begin, it would be worth revisiting the section in this chapter on Positing a Thesis Statement to refresh our understanding of what makes a strong and compelling thesis. For example, we need to consider such qualities as:
- It answers a research question
- It is arguable, meaning other answers are possible, but they are not as strong as the thesis you are stating
- It takes a side in an argument (and gives your readers a choice to agree or disagree)
- It is clearly stated
- It is specific
- It is relevant
- It is compelling
- It does not contradict itself (state that two opposing claims are true)
- It organizes all the points made in the rest of the paper
These criteria will help us craft our prompt and navigate the thesis development process with CoPilot. To maximize the benefits of this collaboration, your prompt should be specific, context-rich, conversational, and mindful of the intended audience.
Also note that prompts are iterative. Just as your thesis evolves with deeper research and insight, you should also refine your prompts as you clarify your ideas and deepen your analysis.
Approach this as a reflective process. This is not about simply telling AI what to do; it’s about clarifying your intentions and sharpening your thoughts. This is an opportunity to articulate what your goals are, refine your language and ideas, and consider the kinds of responses that will best support your work. In this way, the prompt reflects your own thoughts and, in so doing, it sets the stage for more meaningful and focused outcomes.
Having said that, let’s put this to the test.
Initial Prompt:
I’m writing a literary analysis of James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” for an upper-level college literature course. I’m particularly interested in Baldwin’s use of jazz as a metaphor for the social and economic struggles faced by African American communities in 1950s Harlem. I want to create a nuanced, provocative thesis that goes beyond common interpretations. Here’s what I am starting with:
“James Baldwin uses jazz music in “Sonny’s Blues” as a vehicle for expressing and confronting the suffering and complex identity of African Americans within the context of 1950s Harlem.”
Can you help me generate a more complex, arguable thesis that explores this metaphor in depth and situates my analysis within a broader scholarly conversation?
Initial Results:
CoPilot provided four suggestions for ways to enhance and elevate our proposed thesis:
- The Subversive Power of Jazz
In “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin deploys jazz not merely as a mode of expression but as a radical act of survival and resistance—an improvised language through which African Americans reclaim agency, forge identity, and transmute generational trauma in the shadow of systemic oppression in 1950s Harlem.
- Why it works: This version emphasizes jazz as resistance and survival, not just expression. It suggests jazz is a political and existential tool.
- Jazz as Communal Catharsis
Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” reimagines jazz as a communal ritual—a sonic embodiment of African American suffering that transcends individual pain, forging a shared cultural memory and spiritual resilience amid the racial and socioeconomic decay of postwar Harlem.
- Why it works: This version leans into jazz as a collective experience, not just Sonny’s personal outlet. It connects music to cultural memory and resilience.
- Jazz as a Counter-Narrative
In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin positions jazz as a counter-narrative to dominant cultural scripts—an improvisational form that resists linearity, embraces ambiguity, and mirrors the fractured, nonlinear experience of African American identity in a society that demands coherence and conformity.
- Why it works: This version is more theoretical, engaging with narrative form and identity politics. It’s great for a paper that wants to engage with literary theory or poststructuralist ideas.
- Jazz as Emotional Cartography
James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” maps the emotional terrain of African American life through jazz—a genre that, in its improvisation and dissonance, charts the contours of suffering, hope, and identity in ways that language alone cannot, especially within the silenced spaces of 1950s Harlem.
- Why it works: This version is poetic and emphasizes the limitations of language, suggesting jazz fills in the gaps where words fail.
For the paper we’re discussing, any of these would elevate our initial thesis and make our discussion of jazz in “Sonny’s Blues” more provocative. Before we move on, note that after each query, CoPilot will make suggestions for next steps:
Let’s say we’re intrigued by the concept of Jazz as Emotional Cartography, a metaphor that maps the inner landscape of identity, struggle, and resistance. From here, we can ask CoPilot to refine the clarity of this statement, explore suggested next steps, or generate a new prompt that takes our analysis in a fresh direction. For demonstration purposes, I’ll ask CoPilot to refine some of the language and clarify key terms to ensure the statement is both precise and compelling:
Some of the terms in the thesis on Jazz as Emotional Cartography, such as hope and suffering, are a little vague. Can you refine the language in that thesis to clarify what those terms mean in the context of “Sonny’s Blues”?
Here are the results:
While we have a more refined and complex version of the original thesis, it’s important to remember that one of the defining traits of a strong thesis is that it is arguable. As we enter the scholarly conversation, our goal is to make a claim that invites interpretation, provokes debate, and contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding our topic. To achieve this, we need to ensure that our thesis is open-ended and will spark inquiry and encourage multiple perspectives.
With this in mind, let’s ensure our thesis is arguable:
New Prompt:
Revise this thesis to make my claim more arguable and provocative so it generates discussion and debate.
Results:
This is better, but we can take it a step further by adding a counterargument:
We can continue down this path, revising and refining until we are satisfied that we have a complex and compelling thesis statement. Here are some other questions we could ask Copilot:
- Look for additional counter arguments
- Make our claim more assertive or provocative
- Create a hook to engage the reader
- Anchor the thesis more directly in the story
- Clarify the analytical focus
- Highlight the emotional or relational dimension
- Further refine the language for precision
For more about the elements of a good thesis, refer back to the guide in the Positing a Thesis Statement section of this chapter.
Once we’re satisfied with the results, we can follow the suggestions of nest steps provided by CoPilot or move on to another section, such as refining your research question, and creating a new prompt.
Exercises
Objective: This exercise will help better connect your thesis statement to your research question. It will also demonstrate how CoPilot can test the strength of this connection while conducting a final evaluation of your thesis.
Once you have a workable thesis statement, look back to your research question and respond to the following prompts:
Analyze the Connection
- Does your thesis directly answer your research question? If yes, how? If not, what’s missing or misaligned?
- Does it take a clear position?
- Does your thesis reflect the complexity of the question? Is it argumentative rather than merely descriptive?
Revise or Realign
Based on your responses to the above questions, do the following:
- Clarify the claim in the thesis
- Refine the scope of the question
- Ensure both are researchable and logically linked
Check with Copilot: Once you’re analyzed the connection between your research question and your thesis, run the revision through CoPilot. For example: “Evaluate how well this thesis statement answers the research question. Suggest improvements for clarity and alignment.”
Reflection
- What did you learn about the relationship between your thesis and research question?
- How did revising one affect the other?
- What strategies will you use in future research projects?
Final Thoughts
We hope this discussion has demonstrated how CoPilot, or any AI writing assistant, can serve as a powerful tool for refining your thesis. Whether you’re evaluating your statement for clarity, complexity, assertiveness, or arguability, AI can help sharpen and refine your writing and ideas. However, before moving on, we want to remind you that AI is not infallible.
As we noted in our introduction to AI, these tools can sometimes generate content that is inaccurate or misleading. For example, we encountered this first-hand when we were working on this chapter. At one point, CoPilot suggested The Jazz Book by Joachim Berendt as a possible source along with the following summary: “Berendt emphasizes that blues lyrics encapsulate the totality of black life—love, discrimination, prison, and more. This reinforces the idea that Sonny’s music is a form of cultural memory and resistance.”
At first glance, this might seem insightful. However, upon closer examination, the statement that “blues lyrics encapsulate the totality of black life” is generic and disconnected from the context of “Sonny’s Blues” in which Sonny plays instrumental jazz with no lyrics. Had we uncritically accepted this suggestion, we might have created a misleading or overly simplistic interpretation of Baldwin’s story.
Key Takeaways
CoPilot and other AI tools are best used as collaborative partners. They can spark ideas, enhance and elevate your writing, and help you articulate your thoughts more clearly. However, every suggestion, citation, or interpretation should be vetted for accuracy and relevance. Ultimately, your critical thinking skills and good judgment should be the guiding forces through this process.
