Conclusions

So now that you have written a great paper, how do you end it? In middle school, you may have learned to rewrite the thesis statement and rewrite the preview in a new way. This may have worked then, and to some degree it is effective, however high school and college students have learned to finish their essays with more bang.

The most important thing to remember in writing conclusions is to ask yourself this question: What else does the reader need to feel satisfied, intrigued or inspired? Usually, readers want a sense of completion after reading something, so it’s up to the writer to accomplish this task. The more satisfying the conclusion, the stronger the piece will be.

Getting Started:

If you consider that writing an introduction is like building a bridge between your topic and a reader’s world, think of the conclusion as another bridge between the topic back to a reader’s world. In other words if you have successfully immersed your reader into the world of Global Warming, the conclusion should somehow connect global warming to the reader’s world.

Effective Strategies:

• Have the last word (Intrigue)

Think of your conclusion as a way to make a final impression on the reader. It allows you to have the final word on your subject and allows you to encourage readers to have a new view of your subject. Perhaps what you wrote has persuaded readers to look at your subject in a new way. Remind them of this in the conclusion.

• Make New Connections (Inspire)

Readers want to be able to understand how to make connections between what they just read and their own world. Consider again that your subject is Global Warming. After reading your paper, readers may want to know what they can do to help out the Global Warming Crisis. If that’s the case, you may want to inspire readers to do something about the issue like write letters to Congress, buy hybrid vehicles, recycle or ride a bike.

• Point out Broader Implications (Intrigue)

Readers may be so excited about your topic that you want them to see how the impact of one event affects another event. This is quite often true of historical topics. Pointing out to readers that what they just read is not the end of the topic, but perhaps the beginning helps leave them intrigued and curious.

• Return to Introduction (Satisfy)

Bringing readers full circle back to the themes expressed in the introduction can be very satisfying for readers. For example, if you started out your essay with anecdote (short story), consider ending or completing the story with the rest of the anecdote. This also helps readers develop a new understanding of your topic and how the connections are made.

• So what? (Satisfy)

Asking yourself “So what?” at the end of your paper, may inspire you to explain or wrap up your paper in a meaningful way. Some writers discover that there are a few things left to say about the meaning of their paper.

Ineffective Strategies:

• Simply restating thesis and rewriting preview
• Holding off important information until the very last paragraph
• Emotional soap box appeals (e.g.You should…)
• Extra information that you forgot to include in your paper
• Completely new topics
• New statistics or unrelated quotations