Say what you want to achieve and why your reader should be interested in finding out whether you achieve it. The basic structure can be as simple as "We aim to do X, which is important because it will lead to Y. Once you've narrowed your focus to the specific topic of your study, you should thoroughly cover the most recent and most relevant literature pertaining to your study.
Your review of the literature should be complete, but not overly long— remember, you're not writing a review article. If you find that your introduction is too long or overflowing with citations, one possible solution is to cite review articles, rather than all the individual articles that have already been summarized in the review. Consider the following sentence: "Many studies have found a significant association between X and Y [].
Although references [] might provide a good overview of the topic, this sentence doesn't provide enough context or explanation for these past studies.
If all of these references are worth citing, they should be discussed in greater specificity. For example, "A significant association has been found between X and Y in men [], women [], and children []. Get featured articles and other author resources sent to you in English, Japanese, or both languages via our monthly newsletter.
For research in empirical sciences, stating a hypothesis can be an effective way of framing the research. For example, instead of stating "In this study, we show that X is related to Y by method A," you could say, "In this study, we hypothesize that X is related to Y, and we use method A to test this hypothesis. An organizational overview is more common in some fields than others. It is particularly common in technology, but less so in medicine. In the last paragraph of your introduction, consider giving a section-by-section overview of your paper if it is appropriate for your field.
For example, "In Section II, we describe our analysis methods and the datasets we used. In Section III we present the results. Each created different kinds of problems for enslaved people.
The restated question introduction. Restating the question can sometimes be an effective strategy, but it can be easy to stop at JUST restating the question instead of offering a more specific, interesting introduction to your paper. The professor or teaching assistant wrote your question and will be reading many essays in response to it—he or she does not need to read a whole paragraph that simply restates the question.
Example: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass discusses the relationship between education and slavery in 19th century America, showing how white control of education reinforced slavery and how Douglass and other enslaved African Americans viewed education while they endured.
Moreover, the book discusses the role that education played in the acquisition of freedom. Education was a major force for social change with regard to slavery. This introduction begins by giving the dictionary definition of one or more of the words in the assigned question. Anyone can look a word up in the dictionary and copy down what Webster says. If you want to open with a discussion of an important term, it may be far more interesting for you and your reader if you develop your own definition of the term in the specific context of your class and assignment.
If you feel that you must seek out an authority, try to find one that is very relevant and specific. Perhaps a quotation from a source reading might prove better?
Dictionary introductions are also ineffective simply because they are so overused. Instructors may see a great many papers that begin in this way, greatly decreasing the dramatic impact that any one of those papers will have. This kind of introduction generally makes broad, sweeping statements about the relevance of this topic since the beginning of time, throughout the world, etc. It is usually very general similar to the placeholder introduction and fails to connect to the thesis.
Instructors often find them extremely annoying. The book report introduction. This introduction is what you had to do for your elementary school book reports. It gives the name and author of the book you are writing about, tells what the book is about, and offers other basic facts about the book.
It is ineffective because it offers details that your reader probably already knows and that are irrelevant to the thesis. It was published in by Penguin Books. Summary and diagnosis 4. Summary and diagnosis 5. Formulation 5. Formulation 6. Management 6. Skip to content Skip to navigation.
Key elements of an introduction Click on each of the elements to reveal more. Provide some background information and context The introduction usually starts by providing some background information to your particular topic, so the reader understands the key problem being addressed and why it is an issue worth writing about.
Activity Read the paragraph below and see if you can identify the key features of an introduction. Next: Writing body paragraphs. Food, natural resources, and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand. This technique is known as setting the scene, and it can be a highly effective way of drawing your reader into your piece. This introductory technique is similar to the narrative example, in that the writer sets the stage for not only what is happening at the outset of the piece, but for what the reader can expect to follow.
This method can be incredibly powerful when dealing with emerging topics or subjects with strong newsworthy elements. Editorially, this technique offers many benefits to the writer. It allows you to choose and establish a clearly defined position on an issue, and enables you to quickly assume a contrarian stance on contentious topics.
It also allows you to manipulate the emotions of your readers by summarizing and highlighting the positive or negative aspects of a story how you see fit, or to support the points you want to make. Stylistically, this introduction can be structured similarly to narrative introductions — by telling a self-contained story at the outset of the piece before transitioning into the rest of the content — or by helping the reader get up to speed quickly on a developing topic they may not be aware of, as many in-depth news reports from Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey did.
Many reports framed the catastrophic damage caused by Harvey within the wider political contexts of disaster relief funding, contentious proposed cuts to scientific research, and the volatile political climate that surrounds emergency management in crisis-prone regions such as the southern and southeastern United States.
I hope that you now have a greater appreciation for the value and importance of a solid introduction, too. Next time you sit down to write, spare a thought for the daring bravery of Mad Jack Churchill charging into battle with his longbow and claymore like a Viking warrior — then ask whether your intro would make Mad Jack proud.
Originally from the U. Home Blog. Last updated: March 19,
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