English 370Monday, Sept. 12, 2011Melissa Gunby

Effective Introductions and Conclusions

Introductions

What is the purpose of an Introduction?•An introduction is the first thing people

read when they read your essay.•It should get the reader’s attention•It should give the reader an idea about

the topic of your essay.•It should connect to your thesis

statement.

Okay, so how do I start one?•My big tip for introductions is to leave

them for the end of the process. ▫I can’t tell you what I’m going to write

about until after I’ve written it, so my introduction is always the piece I end with.

Narrative• You can always begin with

a narrative or story, drawn from your experiences, or something seen in the news or other media.

On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists crashed two airplanes into the twin towers at the World Trade Center. Ignoring the danger to themselves, hundreds of firefighters rushed inside the buildings to try to save as many lives as possible. Their actions enabled thousands of people to get out, but half the firefighters – over three hundred– died when the twin towers collapsed. Although I have never faced a catastrophe like the one in New York, as a volunteer firefighter I am read – day or night, whenever an alarm sounds – to deal with a dangerous situation.

Thesis statement

Begin with a question• Asking a question can be

useful, because it will keep the reader reading, expecting you to answer the question you pose.

Imagine this scene: A child is sitting under a Christmas tree opening her presents. She laughs and claps her hands as she gets a doll, a pair of shoes, and a sweater. What could spoil this picture? What information could cause the child’s parents to feel guilt? The answer is that children from developing countries probably worked long hours in substandard conditions so this child could receive her gifts.

Be careful with questions, though; try to avoid posing a “you” question (like “have you ever wondered…?”) because you’re not addressing a specific audience, and we try to avoid using 2nd person in academic writing.

Begin with a background statement• A broad statement that

provides some background to the topic can catch your readers’ attention and focus them immediately on your topic.

English is the most widely spoken language in the history of our planet, used in some way by at least one out of every seven human being around the globe. Half of the world’s books are written in English, and the majority of international telephone calls are made in English. English is the language of over sixty percent of the world’s radio programs, many of them beamed, ironically, by the Russians, who know that to win friends and influence nations, they’re best of using English. …

Start with an interesting quote• Some witty or related

statement by someone else can catch your readers’ attention

According to the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, “When you’re single, you are the dictator of your own life…when you’re married, you are part of a vast decision making body.” In other words, before you can do anything, you have to discuss it with someone else. These words kept going through my mind as I thought about asking my girlfriend to marry me. The more I thought about Seinfeld’s words, the more I hesitated. I never suspected that I would pay a price for my indecision.

“In my day, only sluts had tattoos,” Liz’s mom said to me on our first day back at college our sophomore year. I had gotten a tattoo over the summer, an outline only, feminine stamp of a bee circling over a flower on the inside of my left ankle. This was her way of telling me she didn’t approve of my ink. Since then, I’ve gotten a second tattoo, an Amy Brown fairy on my right shoulder, and am considering a third on the inside of my right wrist, to read in script “not all who wander are lost,” a line from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. My parents do not understand my desire for ink, the need to express myself through modifying my body. To them, tattoos are something for thugs or lower-class people, not a college professor, a middle-class white lady, a straight A honor roll student. What my parents fail to realize is that the presence of ink on my body doesn’t discount all those parts of my personality; it is simple another facet of it.

This sample incorporates both a quote and a shocking statement.

Using a surprising statement• Start with something that

takes your reader by surprise.

Some of the smartest people I know never went to college. In fact, some of them never finished high school. they still know how to save 20 percent on the price of a dinner, fix their own faucets when they leak, get discounted prescriptions, get free rides on a bus to Atlantic City, use public transportation to get anywhere in the city, and live on about twenty-two dollars a day. These are my grandparents’ friends. Some people would call them old and poor. I would call them survivors who have learned to make it through life on nothing but a Social Security check.

Practice: which of these is the better introduction?

Conclusions

What are conclusions supposed to do, anyway?•Your conclusion is the last thing a reader

sees, and therefore, the last thing they are likely to remember.

•It should be a full paragraph•It should, in some way, restate your main

idea/remind the reader of your main point•Give the reader a sense of closure, and

not leaving them hanging like the end of a bad movie.

Ending with a narrative• Ending with a narrative or story can be

particularly effective if that’s how you began.▫After twenty years, the tree began to bear.

Although Grandfather complained about how much he lost because the pollen never reached the poor part of town, because at the market he had to haggle over the price of avocados, he loved that tree. It grew, as did his family, and when he died, all his sons standing on each other’s shoulders, oldest to youngest, could not reach the highest branches. The wind could move the branches, but the trunk, thicker than any waist, hugged the ground.

Concluding with a prediction• Ending with an idea about the future can be

especially effective in certain types of essays, particularly arguments.▫On that little street were the ghosts of the people

who brought me into being and the flesh-and-blood kids who will be my children’s companions in the twenty-first century. You could tell by their eyes that they couldn’t figure out why I was there. They were accustomed to being ignored, even by the people who had once populated their rooms. And as long as that continues, or cities will burst and burn, burst and burn, over and over again.

Concluding with a recommendation• Once you’ve convinced readers that there’s a

problem, it’s sensible to put your solution or recommendation into the conclusion. ▫Every effort should be made to ensure that the yew

tree is made available for the continued research and development of taxol. Environmental groups, the timber industry, and the Forest Service must recognize that the most important value of the Pacific yet is as a treatment for cancer. At the same time, its harvest can be managed in a way that allows for the production of the cancer drug taxol without endangering the continual survival of the yew tree.

Wrap up with a quote•A well-chosen quote and be effective,

depending on the type of essay. ▫If you’re writing an argument or analysis,

you don’t want to end on someone else’s words. A narrative, however, would be an appropriate place to use this technique. It was 4:25 am when the ambulance arrived

to take the body of Miss Genovese. It drove off. “then,” a solemn police detective said, “the people came out.”

Tip!•It’s always a good idea for your

conclusion and introduction to reflect on each other.

•You don’t have to use only one of the above methods of development.

SamplesIntro Conclusion

“In my day, only sluts had tattoos,” Liz’s mom said to me on our first day back at college our sophomore year. I had gotten a tattoo over the summer, an outline only, feminine stamp of a bee circling over a flower on the inside of my left ankle. This was her way of telling me she didn’t approve of my ink. Since then, I’ve gotten a second tattoo, an Amy Brown fairy on my right shoulder, and am considering a third on the inside of my right wrist, to read in script “not all who wander are lost,” a line from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. My parents do not understand my desire for ink, the need to express myself through modifying my body. To them, tattoos are something for thugs or lower-class people, not a college professor, a middle-class white lady, a straight A honor roll student. What my parents fail to realize is that the presence of ink on my body doesn’t discount all those parts of my personality; it is simple another facet of it.

As I’ve been on the job market since finishing my MA in 2008, my mother constantly reminds me that I need to cover up my tattoos when I go in to an interview. Lately, my response has been ‘why should I?’ I don’t have to take out my 5 piercings in each ear. I don’t have to necessarily hide the fact that I dyed my hair bright pink or purple (well, now I do, since I work at a technical school with a dress code). I am by far the least inked member of the faculty at several schools I have taught at, and my tattoos are nothing that I am ashamed of. Yet, people still don’t understand the drive some people have to need to outwardly modify their body as part of self-expression. As Ryan quotes in her essay “the last taboo is the body,” and some people just aren’t ready to accept that artistic canvas goes beyond paper and clay.

Intro Conclusion• When I was a junior in high school we read The

Grapes of Wrath in my Junior Literature and Composition class. As part of our months long assignment, we were required to interview someone who had lived through the Great Depression. Instead of calling up my grandparents (who were only in their mid 60s at the time and therefore were very young children during the Depression), I interviewed a co-worker of my mother’s, a man in his 80s, who gave me a lot of good information about what it was like in California at that time. His experiences showed me, like the old family photos in Josh Rittenberg’s essay “Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day,” that although hardship may befall a generation, subsequent generations can move forward and survive new trials and horrors and become great because of the successes of those who came before them. I agree with Rittenberg that the current generation of young people of the world will help shape the world into a better place than it is today.

• As Rittenberg’s dad liked to tell him “tomorrow will be a better day.” I believe that, given all the advances that humans have seen in the past three decades of my life, that this is absolutely true. Even out of the horror of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Japan came the ability to power homes and business through harnessing that power. The horrible destruction of Chernobyl in Russia from nuclear melt down at a power plant led to greater safety standards world wide. I believe that the current generation will make advances that mine hasn’t even conceived of yet, which will lead to a better life for future generations.

Just one more…Intro Conclusion

I rely on strangers every day. Strangers deliver my news, make my coffee, and accompany me on my 150 mile round trip commute on I-5 and I-80 on Mondays. Strangers also rely on me every day. I teach at a couple of different colleges, and in some cases, that education is funded by federal or private loans, and as a taxpayer, I’m not only helping to pay for that education, but I’m responsible for making sure that other taxpayers get their money’s worth out of my students. I expect everyone, from my students, to those I share the road with daily to have a certain amount of personal responsibility to ensure they do what they’re supposed to be doing, from homework to obeying the traffic laws. In his essay “A Shared Moment of Trust,” Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State, writes about how he not only believes in personal responsibility but also “to believe that there are moments when one must rely upon the good faith and judgment of others.” Quite frequently in our daily lives, people must have faith that those around them will make the right decisions to allow for cooperative decision making, whether it’s on the road during a commute, or as Christopher points out, during tense negotiations to release hostages.

Warren Christopher, with the aid of the Algerian foreign minister, safely brought home 52 American citizens who had been held hostage by the Iranians. Throughout this ordeal, Christopher had to rely on the good faith of the Algerian foreign minister to relay messages accurately in order to secure the lives and safety of those hostages. While there is nothing I do on a daily basis that is as high stakes as these negotiations that took place in the 80s, I rely on others to act similarly. If a fellow driver chooses not to use a turn signal, for example, lives are put at risk. If I do not adequately prepare a lesson plan, I am wasting the money of taxpayers who are funding student loans and ultimately paying my salary. In the end, as Christopher states “we must recognize that our fates are not ours alone to control,” and in this increasingly globalized society we live in, this grows more and more true. The college I attended had this motto: Not unto ourselves alone are we born. None of us live in a vacuum, and we all rely on the good faith of those around us.

Practice•I’ve given you a handout with an essay

that’s missing an introduction and conclusion.▫You will need to add the introduction and

conclusion for this essay. Please turn them in when you are finished.

Homework!•Complete 1 draft of your Autobiographical

Essay•Read pages 33-45 in the red book and do

any/all exercises or “writing to/for” activities that follow the readings.

•Vocab packet!