P2 Revision Workshop

A thesis in the form of "I love ballet" or "Ballet makes me happy" or "The best thing in the world is ballet" is not a claim worth arguing -- it is simply a statement of personal preference. 

Claims like "water is wet" or a "Hitler was evil" are so obvious that there's really no need to write a paper about them.

It would be impossible to argue that "ballet is better than" your favorite sport, but imagine a paper that begins this way:

Because a ballet dancer has the agility of a high-jumper and the stamina of a defensive lineman, ballet could be classified as a sport; yet a ballet blends physical performance with creative expression in a way that neither high-jumping nor football can match.

A student who wrote a paper with the above thesis should probably have personal experience with all three activities, since in our class I'm not asking you to do outside research.  But I'm not that interested in the content of the above sample thesis -- I'm just using it as a model of the difference between simple opinion and a complex, arguable point of view.