SHS

English for Academic and Professional Purposes – SHS

Module
First Edition 2020

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Published by Department of Education

Secretary: Leonor Magtolis Briones
Undersecretary: Lorna Dig Dino

Development Team of the Module

Consultant and Editor:
Dr. Kyzil D. Lipar Ms. Barbra N. Villareal

Author:
Joana R. Jallorina – Gumban

Layout Artist:
Joana R. Jallorina – Gumban
 11

EAPP Module

This worksheet was collaboratively developed and

reviewed by educators from public and private schools,
colleges, and universities. We encourage teachers and
other education stakeholders to email their feedback,
comments and recommendations to the Department of
Education at action@deped.gov.ph

Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
 Lesson

4 THESIS STATEMENT OF
AN ACADEMIC TEXT

One of the skills that is significant in your everyday life as an individual

is getting things done quickly in an efficient and accurate ways. As a Senior
High School student, this skill is also useful in your classes, especially when
you have to read academic texts.
Increasing your speed in reading can be achieved by finding the main
idea or thesis statement of the text and the topic sentence of the paragraphs. If
one can identify the main idea or thesis statement and the topic sentences, one
he or she does not have to read the entire text to get the key information he or
she needs.

At the end of the lesson, you are expected to state the thesis statement
of an academic text.

Task 1. Into the Text. Read the following abstract and answer the
questions that follow

Previous studies revealed that meaning-focused instruction (MFI)

and form-focused instruction (FFI) are two of the most effective
approaches in developing the overall language skills of second language
learners, separately. However, no experimental studies have been
conducted to prove their effectiveness when integrated. This study,
therefore, aims to fill in this gap by investigating the effects of combining
MFI and FFI in developing the speaking, writing, and grammar skills of
selected secondary ESL students in public high schools in the
Philippines. The participants involved in this study are 480 third year high
school students. These students were divided into four groups: Group A
(n=120) received both the MFI and FFI, Group B (n=120) received MFI
only, Group C (n=120) received FFI only, and Group D (n=120) received
the standard English programme for secondary ESL students. Findings
revealed that students from Group A, B and C significantly improved in
their speaking, writing, and grammar skills but not Group D.
 Based on ANOVA, findings further showed that students from
Group A have outperformed students from Groups B, C and D. From
these findings, it is concluded that combining MFI and FFI is an effective
way in significantly improving the language skills of students. Future
directions and implications for teaching are also discussed.

What are the approaches in developing the language skills of second language
learners mentioned in the text?

_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________

Who are the participants involved in the study as mentioned in the text?

_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________

What groups were utilized in the study? What particular instruction did each
group receive?

_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________

What tool was used to obtain the findings of the study?

_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
Why do you think this particular study is conducted? Can you cite the part of
the essay which tells you the point of this investigation?

_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________

Understanding and Locating the Thesis Statement

The thesis statement presents or describes the point of an essay. In an

academic text, the thesis statement is usually presented in the abstract or
executive summary or found at the last part of the introduction. It is written in
the declarative sentence.
Consider the sample abstract and introduction with the underlined thesis
statement.

Sample Abstract

Previous studies revealed that meaning-focused instruction (MFI)

and form-focused instruction (FFI) are two of the most effective
approaches in developing the overall language skills of second language
learners, separately. However, no experimental studies have been
conducted to prove their effectiveness when integrated. This study,
therefore, aims to fill in this gap by investigating the effects of combining
MFI and FFI in developing the speaking, writing, and grammar skills of
selected secondary ESL students in public high schools in the
Philippines. The participants involved in this study are 480 third year high
school students. These students were divided into four groups: Group A
(n=120) received both the MFI and FFI, Group B (n=120) received MMI
only, Group C (n=120) received FFI only, and Group D (n=120) received
the standard English programme for secondary ESL students. Findings
revealed that students from Group A, B and C significantly improved in
their speaking, writing, and grammar skills but not Group D. Based on
ANOVA, findings further showed that students from Group A have
outperformed students from Groups B, C and D. From these findings, it
is concluded that combining MFI and FFI is an effective way in
significantly improving the language skills of students. Future directions
and implications for teaching are also discussed.
 Sample Introduction

Filipinos are frequent moviegoers. Perhaps because of the comic

relief that comedy films promise, or the fairytale ending we all want to
have that the rom-coms provide, we indulge in the cinematography of
moving pictures. In the 1984 Guinness Book of World Records, the
Philippines was listed as the nation with the world’s most avid film-going
public, averaging 19 trips to the cinema per year, per person (Yeatter,
2007). In a more recent statistic, the country has also been known to have
the highest level of theatre admission in Southeast Asia, with 63 million
moviegoers in 2004 (“Phil. Indie films”, n.d.). More often that not, movie
theatres all over the Metro are filled with people who want to break out
from their usual working routine to catch a two-hour movie with friends.
Oddly enough, however, we as constant consumers of these motion
pictures tend to patronize those that are made particularly international.

Source: Tagudina, M. (n.d.) Curioser and curioser. The making of a better Philiipine cinema.

In some cases, in academic texts, the thesis statement is located at the

last part of the introduction is replaced with a purpose statement. Unlike thesis
statement, the purpose statement is introduced by signal phrases that
announce the purpose, scope, or direction of the text as well as its focus. These
signal phrases include: “This study examined…”, “This paper examines…”, The
aim of this essay is to…”, This paper begins with…”, “In this paper, I hope to…”,
“The primary objective of this paper is to…”, and “The purpose of this essay is
to…” among others.
Consider the following example:

There is a challenge posted to higher education. That is to attune its

present educational goals, objectives and mission-vision to the demands of
a globalized world. Consequently, institutions, especially in the developing
countries, have started to reconstruct their global dynamics of knowledge
production through establishing linkages among institutions across nations.
Generally, the common set of internationalization of higher education
highlights the importance of promoting cultural diversity and fostering
intercultural understanding, respect and tolerance among people (Turner
and Robinson, 2007). These reiterations of what internationalization of
higher education should emphasize are actually based on the profound
 belief that the cultural heritage of people is universal and humankind shares
the bond of humanity and global citizenship in the process of advancement
of knowledge (Wing, 2010). Exploratory in nature, this paper aims to
examine the key concepts on IHE. Specifically, this paper reviews articles
which will shed light on the significant ideas and proposes a preliminary
framework for IHE in the Philippines.

Strategies in Locating the Thesis Statement

The following strategies are also useful in helping you locate the thesis
statement of a text.
• Read the title of the text and make inferences on its purpose.
• If the text has no abstract or executive summary, read the first few
paragraphs as the thesis statement is usually located there.
• In other cases, you may also check the conclusion where authors
sum up and review their main points.
Understanding and Locating Topic Sentences
The topic sentence presents or describes the point of the paragraph; in
other words, it is the main idea of a paragraph; in other words, it is the main
idea of a paragraph. It can be located in the beginning, in the middle, or last
part of a paragraph.
Consider the examples below:

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is the

agency responsible for human development concerns such as the provision
of social services such as those provided in day care centers. For instance,
DSWD is implementing the Supplementary Feeding Program (SFP)
nationwide. This is an addition to the regular meals served to Day Care
Center children as part of DSWD’s program to ensure that day care children
are well-nourished as they attend classes.
Source: “Education for All, 2015 National Review Report: Philippines” (2015).

Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) plays a crucial role

in ensuring that children are taught the skills and knowledge essential in
building a learner’s interest to acquire education in life. Recognizing the
benefits of ECCD to a person’s well-being and the country, RA No. 8980 or
the ECCD Act was legislated to institutionalize a national ECCD system.
Through the ECCD Act, a comprehensive, integrative and sustainable
ECCD framework of the country was developed. This ECCD Act promotes
multisectoral and inter-agency collaboration under the coordination of a
national ECCD Council.
Source: “Education for All, 2015 National Review Report: Philippines” (2015).
Strategies in Locating the Thesis Statement
Strategies in Locating the Topic Sentence
The following strategies are useful in helping you locate the topic
sentence in a paragraph:
• Read the first sentence of the paragraph very carefully because most
authors state their topic sentence in the beginning of the paragraph.
• Browse the sentences in the paragraph to identify what they
describe. The sentence that best describes the topic of the paragraph
is the topic sentence.
• Find the concept or idea being tackled, which in colloquial term is the
“big word” in the paragraph. The sentence that defines the big word
is usually the topic sentence.
• Identify the purpose of the paragraph. The sentence that presents or
describes the purpose is the topic sentence.
• Observe the writing style of the author. Focus especially on where he
or she usually places his or her topic sentence.

Write TS, if the statement is true. Otherwise, NTS.

________________1. A paragraph usually consists a single topic

________________2.
________________3.
________________4.
________________5.
________________6.
________________7.
________________8.
sentence.
The abstract presents the thesis of the text.
By observing the writing style of the author, you
can determine the location of the topic
sentence.
Locating the thesis statement or topic sentence
while reading a text can save time.
Most of the time, the author begins the
paragraph with a topic sentence.
Sometimes, the main idea is presented at the
end of the paragraph.
The main idea is always stated in the first part
of a paragraph.
The thesis of a text is in question form.
 ________________9. When an abstract is not provided, the thesis
statement is not evident in the text.
________________10. Usually the sentence that defines the big word
is usually the topic sentence.

WRAP IT UP

The thesis statement presents focus of an essay; usually located

in the abstract or executive summary or found at the last part of the
introduction expressed in declarative sentence.
Understanding the topic sentence or main idea of the paragraph
helps you locate the thesis statement of an academic text.

Hone your skills in locating main ideas and topic sentences by checking
the websites below:

Exercises: Locating Main Ideas

http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/0073123587/student_view0_cha
pter8/locating_the-stated_main_idea_multiple-choice_exercise.html

What is the Main Idea Activity

http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/language_arts/main_idea/quiz151
0.html

Reading Exercises: Locating Main Ideas

http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/reading-worksheets/main-idea.pdf
THINK OUT

Read each of the following texts and locate the thesis statement.

A.
Recent research on wealth and household finances seeks to blend
neoclassical models with an understanding of a real-world imperfections to
answer questions about why some people save and others do not. This
paper focuses on Baby Boomers standing on the verge of retirement, many
of whom have saved little and will face financial insecurity in old age. The
new 2004 wave of the Health and Retirement Study is invaluable for this
first analysis of the financial situation of leading-edge Boomers, as it reports
not only wealth levels but also information about respondents’ planning
behaviors and economic literacy. We show that the distribution of net worth
among Early Baby Boomers is quite skewed; those in the 75 th percentile
had over 10 times the net worth ($400K) of households in the bottom 25 th
percentile ($37K). There is substantial heterogeneity in wealth within this
cohort: the median high-school dropout had less than $23K in total net
worth, while the media college graduate had over 10 times as much. Many
Black and Hispanic Boomer households hold miniscule levels of wealth.
Further, many in this cohort have accumulated little wealth outside their
homes: at the mean, one third of the early Boomers’ wealth is held in the
form of home equity and at the median the fraction is close to half. Since
many members of this EBB cohort are reaching retirement with a
substantial portion of their wealth in housing, they are particularly
vulnerable to housing value shocks. By contrast, holders of stocks, IRAs
and business equity are concentrated in the top quartiles. Finally, we show
that planning and economic literacy are important predictors of savings and
investment success.

Source: Lusardi, A. & Michell, O. (2006). Baby boomer retirement security: The roles
of planning financial literacy and housing wealth. University of Michigan Retirement
Research Center.

Thesis Statement:
B.
This paper considers the nature of professional learning arising
through the processes of carrying out action research in professional
organizations. It suggests that communicative space opened up outside of
the professional context can lead to unanticipated professional learning.
Such learning could be considered transformative in the way it leads
professionals to reframe their understanding of the dilemma arising from
doing action research. To illustrate this, two cases are presented to show
the pivotal role university tutors can play not only in the way they create and
maintain communicative space but also in the way they purposefully
employ strategies to interrupt and challenge viewpoints, assumptions and
practices held by professionals doing action research, enabling
professional learning to become transformative.

Source: Eady, S., & Drew, V. (2015). Doing action research in organizations: Using
communicative spaces to facilitate (transformative) professional learning.
Action Research, 13 (2), 105-122.

Thesis Statement:

C.
Terrorists attack civilians to coerce their governments into making
political concessions. Does this strategy work? To empirically assess the
effectiveness of terrorism, the author exploits variation in the target
selection of 125 violate substate campaigns. The results show that terrorist
campaigns against civilian targets are significantly less effective than
guerilla campaigns against military targets at inducing government
concessions. The negative political effect of terrorism is evident across legit
model specifications after carefully controlling for tactical confounds.
Drawing on political psychology, the author concludes with a theory to
account for why governments resist compliance when their civilians are
targeted.

Source: Abrahams, M. (2012). The political effectiveness of terrorism revisited.

Action Research, 45 (3), 366-393.

Thesis Statement:
D.
Teaching English for specific purposes is sometimes quite a
daunting challenge for most of the teachers in any part of the world despite
their personal motivation, expertise and availability of the best resources.
With the rapid encroachment of digital technology on all fields of academic
teaching and learning, it becomes all the more incumbent for educators to
have effective strategies to incorporate and exploit the ubiquitous and
popular digital platforms to teach their “digital native” students to have
better results. Considering the paramount influence of these digital
platforms and social media, this study aims at exploring the potent effect of
facebook as one of the pervasive digital platforms such as facebook, Twitter
and WhatsApp do have a revelatory potential to ameliorate academic and
professional learning.

Source: Al-Amri, S., & Zahid G. (2015). Ubiquitous digital platform to reach English for
specific purposes (ESP). International Journal of Bilingual & Multilingual Teachers of
English.

Thesis Statement:

E.
This study examines the viewpoints of Macau and Singapore
residents on the development of casino gambling and the social, economic
and environmental impacts that are thought to arise. It also assesses
whether differences exist between socio-demographic groupings. The
sample comprised 416 respondents from Macau and 409 from Singapore.
An analysis using primarily descriptive statistics indicated both sub-
samples had similar viewpoints although Macau residents tended to have
higher scores pertaining to the consequences of gambling. It is suggested
that the differences arise due to the greater exposure of Macau residents
to the influences of casino development.

Source: Wu, S-T., Chen, Y-S. (2015). The social, economic, and environmental
impacts of casino gambling on the residents of Macau and Singapore.
Tourism Management, 48, 285-298.

Thesis Statement:
REFERENCES GALLERY

Abrahms, M. (2012). The political effectiveness of terrorism revisited. Action

Research, 45 (3), 366-393.

Al-Amri, S., & Zahid, G. (2105). Ubiquitous digital platform to teach English for
specific purposes (ESP). International Journal of Bilingual & Multilingual
Teachers of English, 3, 13-23. Retrieved from
http://www.uob_files/698/vol3-1/paper%202.pdf

Barrot, J. & Sipacio, P.J. (2016). English for academic and professional
purposes for senior high school. C & E Publishing: Quezon City.

Eady, S., & Drew, V. (2015). Doing action research in organizations: Using
communicative spaces to facilitate (transformative) professional
learning. Action Research, 13, 105-122.

Lusardi, A. & Mitchell, O. (2006). Baby boomer retirement security: The roles
of planning financial literacy, and housing wealth. Retrieved from
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/49426/wp114.p
df?sequence=1&isAllowed=

Philippine National Commission for UNESCO. (2015). Education for All 2015
national review report: Philippines. Retrieved from
http://unesdoc.unesaco.org/images/0023/0020303/230331e.pdf

Tagudina, M. (n.d.). Curiouser and curiouser: The making of a better Philippine

cinema. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/4300513/_Curiouser_and_Curiouser_Makin
gs_of_a_Better_Philippine_Cinema

Wu, S-T., & Chen, Y-S. (2015). The social, economic and environmental
impacts of casino gambling on the residents of Macau and Singapore.
Tourism Management, 48, 285-298.
ANSWER KEY

Think Out

1. The approaches in developing the language skills of second language

learners mentioned in the text are meaning-focused instruction (MFI)
and form-focused instruction (FFI).

2. The participants of the study are the 480 third year high school students.

3. The groups that were utilized and the kind of instruction they received
respectively are as follows:
• Group A – both meaning-focused and form-focused instruction
• Group B – meaning-focused instruction only
• Group C – form-focused instruction only
• Group D – standard English program for secondary ESL students

4. ANOVA was used to obtain the findings of the study.

5. This study, therefore, aims to fill in this gap by investigating the effects
of combining MFI and FFI in developing the speaking, writing, and
grammar skills of selected secondary ESL students in public high
schools in the Philippines.

Work it Out
1. TS
2. TS
3. TS
4. TS
5. TS
6. TS
7. NTS
8. NTS
9. NTS
10. TS
Think Out

1. This paper focuses on Baby Boomers standing on the verge of

retirement, many of whom have saved little and will face financial
insecurity in old age.

2. This paper considers the nature of professional learning arising through

the processes of carrying out action research in professional
organizations.

3. To empirically assess the effectiveness of terrorism, the author exploits

variation in the target selection of 125 violate substate campaigns.

4. Considering the paramount influence of these digital platforms and social

media, this study aims at exploring the potent effect of facebook as one
of the pervasive digital platforms such as facebook, Twitter and
WhatsApp do have a revelatory potential to ameliorate academic and
professional learning.

5. This study examines the viewpoints of Macau and Singapore residents

on the development of casino gambling and the social, economic and
environmental impacts that are thought to arise
METADATA

Title English for Academic and Professional

Purposes

Language English

Keywords Thesis Statement, Main Idea, Topic

Sentence

Description The module will help learners to identify

thesis statement in an academic text

Primary Media Print Material

Primary Storage Flash drive, CD

Resource Location Department of Education

Region VI – Western Visayas
Division of Aklan

Developer Joana J. Gumban