Introductions and Conclusions

Introductions and conclusions may have different functions in a text depending on the discourse community and genre.

Depending on the type of text some writers don’t compose their introduction until after they have drafted the body of the essay or project. If you struggle writing introductions, this strategy may help you. It makes sense, right? You may think, how can I effectively introduce something I haven’t written yet? Yet, in some genres, writing the introduction first will launch you in the right direction for the rest of the draft.

However, conclusions in academic writing may often be trickier for you as a student. Let’s be honest, when you finally finish a writing assignment for a class, you probably want to conclude with something like, “There, I’m all done now,” or “You asked for it, so here you go,” or “I’ve now reached the minimum word count for this assignment.” Yet, whether the assignment is specific to a particular class or has a more practical, real-world purpose, you always want to consider your rhetorical situation. In short, when composing your conclusion, think, “How do I want to leave my readers?”

Read more about introductions and conclusions in Rhetoric and Composition (Bay College).

TRY THIS to understand conclusions. You may find the following four ending strategies useful in your college writing: discuss the implications of the findings or argument, end with an anecdote, refer to the beginning, or propose some action. Let’s see if you can identify each of these strategies in the following examples.

Notice how each concluding paragraph begins in the same way—going back to the focus of the project (telling us what you told us). However, the concluding strategy, in bold is different in each example. Identify the following conclusions’ ending strategies (after the main point/thesis has been re-stated).

When composing a conclusion, remember to consider your rhetorical situation for the project—how do you want to leave us readers?