Mr. Sato here. Let's talk about essay conclusions.
OK, so you're writing an essay for school and now you have to write a conclusion.
I can help you that. The purpose of a conclusion is to tell your readers what
the point of your essay has been and to invite them to engage that idea in their
own minds or in their own actions.
There isn't just one correct way to do this any more than there is one correct
way to dance. So, in this video let's look at some of the many different tools you
can choose from for concluding an essay. To write a conclusion, you need these
three things: a paragraph transition, a statement or restatement of your thesis,
and what I call the broader significance.
Here's a time index if you want to skip around.
Also, I'm going to use four different topics
so you can see examples from different kinds of essays.
Explanatory (also known as expository): "the top three irritating things parents do."
Literary: "the theme of Macbeth is that the truth will always come out."
Persuasive (also called argumentative): "the death penalty should be abolished."
Exploratory: "what can be done to improve race relations in our country today?"
Explanatory examples be red, literary will be blue, persuasive will be orange,
and exploratory will be green.
The transition is just a word or few words to tell your reader
that you're coming to the conclusion.
Avoid the words "in conclusion"
as it's overused and many teachers positively despair when they
read those two words for the thousandth time. Your transition doesn't have to be
elaborate. My favorite is short and sweet: "so" -- like this.
An instructor at Michigan State University put this useful list of
standard transitional devices, organized by what they do.
Here's a link to the section about conclusions. Skim down to the section
about summation too.
Next, the thesis. If you're writing a persuasive or
argumentative essay, like a literary analysis or a position paper, you then
have to state or restate your thesis.
if you gave your thesis earlier you paraphrase it here. (Paraphrase means to
say something again but in different words.) "So, in Macbeth we see repeatedly
the theme that the truth cannot be kept hidden. It will always come out eventually."
Or "The death penalty is expensive, unconstitutional and irrevocable
in the case of a false conviction. It should be immediately abolished in
all 50 states."
You're reminding your reader what the point of the body of your essay is.
You do this close the deal, to hammer the point home. You're sort of saying, "so
after the sequence of thoughts I come to this conclusion and I hope you do too."
Don't use those exact words though; make it specific to what you're writing about.
And usually your thesis here can be less general than when you stated it at the
beginning, more specific to the arguments you just made in the body of your essay.
If you didn't state your thesis earlier in your essay that might be a mistake.
Or it might not. Check with your teacher to see if the thesis early in the essay
is a requirement. It often is.
However, it's also possible that you've been writing the kind of essay that
starts with a question or a problem. For example, your essay might begin with the
question, "What can be done to improve race relations in our country today?"
In that case, the body of your essay will examine multiple possibilities and the
thesis in your conclusion is an answer to that question or a solution to that
problem. Now, if you're writing an explanatory essay, like an explanation of
"the top three irritating things parents do,"
well, that's different. In that case you don't have a thesis. You probably have
more of a statement of your topic, like, "Here are the top three things parents do
that drive their kids crazy."
Well, in your conclusion, you just paraphrase that, like, "So, out of all the
things that parents do that drive their kids up the wall, these three are the ones
that make us want run away and join the circus."
What I call the broader significance is the most interesting part of a
conclusion. The broader significance is the answer to the question "so what?" or
"why does it matter?"
it's where you extend your essay to leave
your readers with something to think about. It's like you're now handing the
ball to them and telling them to run with it.
1. The bigger picture.
Let me first explain this using examples. So, if
you've just given multiple arguments against the death penalty, you now
imagine someone saying, "OK, so the death penalty is bad for all these economic
and practical reasons, fine. So what?"
In the broader significance, you could pull back the camera and take a
look at the bigger picture, the larger implications. You could write about what
it reveals about us as a people that we refrain from killing people even if they
themselves are murderers. Where your main arguments are practical and intellectual,
you shift in your conclusion and appeal to the reader's emotions on a higher
moral plane. It leaves them with something bigger to think about other
than the cool, rational details of your arguments. If you're using an inverted
pyramid hook, this is sort of the same thing but in reverse: thesis on top
followed by a broader more general statement.
Here's a link to my video in which I talk about inverted pyramid hooks.
Or you could use a call to action where you urge your readers to write to their
state legislators and the sign petitions calling for the abolishment of the
death penalty. Here you're saying,
"OK, so now that you agree with me, here's what you should do about it."
That's a pretty easy way to go. This kind can be used
with pretty much any kind of essay.
3. Relevance to Reader. Let's say you're arguing that the theme of Macbeth
is that the truth will always come out eventually. You could write about why
being truthful is as important today in the age of the Internet as it ever was,
and why. Give an example show why the theme is directly relevant to the lives
of your readers today.
4. Qualification. Or if you're writing that essay about
the top three irritating things that parents do, you could pivot and say that
it doesn't mean parents don't also do good things, and give some examples.
The fact that they're irritating just means that they're imperfect as all people are
and we don't love them less because of it. Here, you're qualifying or
clarifying your thesis. That means you're explaining what your thesis doesn't mean,
that the reader shouldn't misunderstand your thesis to mean something you don't.
Or in that essay about Macbeth you might acknowledge that some lies are never
exposed, Like the unknown person we call Jack the Ripper. Whoever that was, he
lied every time you opened his mouth and didn't say "Hey, I'm that guy that killed
all those women." But you explain those are unusual exceptions. For most of us,
under normal conditions, when we tell a major lie it eventually is revealed.
You're explaining under what conditions your thesis is true. You're qualifying.
You're saying in most cases this is true.
Be careful here because it's possible that doing this could weaken support for
your thesis, but by showing a little flexibility and conceding some extreme
exceptions, you might win over
the yeah-but-what-about-this what-about-that kind of reader.
5. You can also show the consequences of doing what you propose. In an essay in
which you're arguing against something like the one about the death penalty you
could instead explain what good things would happen if the death penalty were
abolished in your state.
6. Bookending. One of the best and easiest ways to add
a broader significance works only if you wrote an interesting hook at the
beginning of the essay. In the conclusion, you bring your reader back to whatever
you talked about in the hook. So, let's say in the essay about Macbeth, you wrote
about an example of a lie. In the broader significance you can go back to that
example and write about how telling the truth would have turned out to be more
beneficial or at least less harmful for everyone involved.
This is sometimes called bookending because the beginning and the ending are
are a matched set.
7. If-then.
Finally, in the case of the more exploratory style essay,
where you're examining a problem or question and your solution is your
thesis, your thesis may not have appeared until late in your essay. No big deal.
You can still use the same kinds of broader significances we've
just been talking about.
but consider transitioning with an if-then approach. For example, if the
topic was "What can be done to improve race relations in our country today?" your
essay will look at several possible approaches and might decide that what's
really needed is more economic equality among the races because that would
result in increased racial integration in our neighborhoods which in turn would
be reflected in our schools, workplaces, and other social institutions. If that's
your thesis, you could say IF economic equality is the key, THEN this is what we
must do (call to action). Or THEN this is what this says about our democracy
(the bigger picture), or THEN this is what will happen if we do nothing about it
(that's a consequence). Basically you're still using any of the other kinds of broader
significances discussed in this video. You're just using an if-then as a transition.
So, remember the purpose of your conclusion is to say "Here's the
point of this essay. Now stop listening passively to my arguments and do
something," and that something might be to write to their congressperson or simply
to actively share your opinion, to now have the same understanding of something
that you do, or to think about why this matters enough to influence the way they
look at the world or live their lives.
you're saying "the ball is your court now." Make your reader engage your ideas,
not just hear you. These methods I've just taught you are tools in your toolbox. Some
of these will work for your essay and some won't and there are probably a lot
of other ways to conclude an essay effectively. Just keep the purpose of a
conclusion in mind and you'll do fine.
Good luck with your essay!