how to write a conclusion for a literature essay

In a short paper—even a research paper—you don’t need to provide an exhaustive summary as part of your conclusion. But you do need to make some kind of transition between your final body paragraph and your concluding paragraph. This may come in the form of a few sentences of summary. Or it may come in the form of a sentence that brings your readers back to your thesis or main idea and reminds your readers where you began and how far you have traveled.

So, for example, in a paper about the relationship between ADHD and rejection sensitivity, Vanessa Roser begins by introducing readers to the fact that researchers have studied the relationship between the two conditions and then provides her explanation of that relationship. Here’s her thesis: “While socialization may indeed be an important factor in RS, I argue that individuals with ADHD may also possess a neurological predisposition to RS that is exacerbated by the differing executive and emotional regulation characteristic of ADHD.”

In her final paragraph, Roser reminds us of where she started by echoing her thesis: “This literature demonstrates that, as with many other conditions, ADHD and RS share a delicately intertwined pattern of neurological similarities that is rooted in the innate biology of an individual’s mind, a connection that cannot be explained in full by the behavioral mediation hypothesis.”  

Highlight the “so what”  

At the beginning of your paper, you explain to your readers what’s at stake—why they should care about the argument you’re making. In your conclusion, you can bring readers back to those stakes by reminding them why your argument is important in the first place. You can also draft a few sentences that put those stakes into a new or broader context.

In the conclusion to her paper about ADHD and RS, Roser echoes the stakes she established in her introduction—that research into connections between ADHD and RS has led to contradictory results, raising questions about the “behavioral mediation hypothesis.”

She writes, “as with many other conditions, ADHD and RS share a delicately intertwined pattern of neurological similarities that is rooted in the innate biology of an individual’s mind, a connection that cannot be explained in full by the behavioral mediation hypothesis.”  

Leave your readers with the “now what”  

After the “what” and the “so what,” you should leave your reader with some final thoughts. If you have written a strong introduction, your readers will know why you have been arguing what you have been arguing—and why they should care. And if you’ve made a good case for your thesis, then your readers should be in a position to see things in a new way, understand new questions, or be ready for something that they weren’t ready for before they read your paper.

In her conclusion, Roser offers two “now what” statements. First, she explains that it is important to recognize that the flawed behavioral mediation hypothesis “seems to place a degree of fault on the individual. It implies that individuals with ADHD must have elicited such frequent or intense rejection by virtue of their inadequate social skills, erasing the possibility that they may simply possess a natural sensitivity to emotion.” She then highlights the broader implications for treatment of people with ADHD, noting that recognizing the actual connection between rejection sensitivity and ADHD “has profound implications for understanding how individuals with ADHD might best be treated in educational settings, by counselors, family, peers, or even society as a whole.”

To find your own “now what” for your essay’s conclusion, try asking yourself these questions:

• What can my readers now understand, see in a new light, or grapple with that they would not have understood in the same way before reading my paper? Are we a step closer to understanding a larger phenomenon or to understanding why what was at stake is so important?  
• What questions can I now raise that would not have made sense at the beginning of my paper? Questions for further research? Other ways that this topic could be approached?  
• Are there other applications for my research? Could my questions be asked about different data in a different context? Could I use my methods to answer a different question?  
• What action should be taken in light of this argument? What action do I predict will be taken or could lead to a solution?  
• What larger context might my argument be a part of?  

What to avoid in your conclusion  

• a complete restatement of all that you have said in your paper.  
• a substantial counterargument that you do not have space to refute; you should introduce counterarguments before your conclusion.  
• an apology for what you have not said. If you need to explain the scope of your paper, you should do this sooner—but don’t apologize for what you have not discussed in your paper.  
• fake transitions like “in conclusion” that are followed by sentences that aren’t actually conclusions. (“In conclusion, I have now demonstrated that my thesis is correct.”)
• picture_as_pdf Conclusions

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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay

The conclusion is the final paragraph of your writing, and it holds significant weight. It allows you to leave a lasting impression on the reader. But how to write a conclusion that effectively summarizes your points and resonates with your audience? 

This article will guide you through the process of crafting a strong conclusion paragraph, step by step. Our term paper writers will break down the key elements and provide clear examples to illustrate each point. By following these steps and referencing the examples, you'll be well on your way to writing impactful conclusions that leave your reader feeling satisfied and informed.

What Is a Conclusion

Conclusion in an essay is the final paragraph or section that wraps up the main points and provides closure to the piece.

Imagine it as the bridge that connects your ideas to a broader significance. A well-crafted conclusion does more than simply summarize; it elevates your points and offers a sense of closure, ensuring the reader leaves with a clear understanding of your argument's impact. In the next section, you will find conclusion ideas that you could use for your essay.

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How to Write a Conclusion

A powerful conclusion not only summarizes but also reinforces your message and leaves a lasting impression. Here's a breakdown of how to write a conclusion for an essay:

• Restate Your Thesis: Briefly remind the reader of your central point. Don't simply copy and paste your thesis statement, but rephrase it using different words.
• Summarize Key Points: Revisit the main arguments or evidence you presented throughout your writing. This reminds the reader of the journey you took them on and ensures they grasp the core takeaways.
• Avoid Introducing New Information: The conclusion is not the place to introduce brand new ideas. Stick to summarizing and reinforcing the existing points.
• End on a Strong Note: Go beyond a simple summary. You can add a final thought, pose a question to spark further reflection, or highlight the significance of your topic.

Read more: Persuasive essay outline . 

The Purpose of a Conclusion

As you already understand, the conclusion paragraph serves a critical function in your writing. It serves as a final push to solidify your message in your readers’ minds. It's also your opportunity to:

• Remind the reader of your central point (thesis) and the key arguments or evidence used to support it. 
• Use this space to offer a final thought, pose a question that prompts further pondering, or emphasize the significance of your topic.

Remember, a concluding paragraph should NOT:

• Introduce New Information: The conclusion is not the place for brand new ideas. Its purpose lies in wrapping up and reinforcing what you've already established.
• Stray from the Thesis: Don't introduce arguments or evidence not discussed earlier in your writing. Maintain focus on the core message you've been building throughout your work.

How Long Should a Conclusion Paragraph Be

Generally, the ideal length depends on the overall length and complexity of your essay. However, it is not the sole factor. A well-written conclusion of 3 sentences can be far more effective than a rambling one that drags on for multiple paragraphs. 

Here are some general guidelines can help you achieve a balance when writing a conclusion:

• In most cases, you can effectively summarize your points and leave a lasting impression within 3-5 sentences.
• Prioritize delivering a clear and impactful message over unnecessary elaboration.
• Proportion matters. A lengthy research paper might warrant a slightly longer conclusion (think 5-7 sentences) to adequately address all the main points. Conversely, a shorter piece like a blog post might require a more concise conclusion (2-4 sentences).

Conclusion Transition Words

The right transition word can smoothly bridge the gap between your main body of text and your conclusion. Here are some transition words for conclusion categorized by their purpose:

7 Tips for Writing a Conclusion

Having grasped the core functions and structure of a conclusion paragraph, let's check out some practical tips to elevate your closing statements. Here are 7 effective strategies to consider from our dissertation writer :

• Vary Your Sentence Structure: Avoid a monotonous string of simple sentences. Use a mix of sentence structures (short, long, complex) to create a more engaging rhythm.
• Connect to the Introduction: For a cohesive feel, subtly tie your conclusion back to your introduction. You can reference an opening question you posed or revisit a key image you mentioned. Consider this tip especially when unsure how to start a conclusion.
• Embrace Figurative Language (Sparingly): There are different conclusion ideas but a well-placed metaphor or simile can help leave a lasting impression. However, use figurative language strategically and avoid clichés.
• Appeal to the Reader's Emotions: Did your writing highlight a pressing issue? Consider evoking emotions relevant to your topic when you want to know how to write a conclusion paragraph that tugs at the reader's heartstrings.
• Consider a Quote (if Relevant): A powerful quote from a credible source can add authority and depth to your essay conclusion. Ensure the quote aligns with your thesis and enhances your message.
• End with a Strong Call to Action (Optional): If your purpose is to persuade or inspire action, conclude with a clear call to action. Tell your reader exactly what you want them to do next.
• Proofread and Revise: Just like any other part of your writing, proofread your conclusion carefully. Ensure clarity and a smooth flow between your main body of text and the closing statement.

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Do’s and Don’ts of Essay Conclusion

Let's now look at some simple tips from our online paper writing service to help you avoid common mistakes when writing a conclusion.

Conclusion Paragraph Examples

Here are three conclusion paragraph examples showcasing how powerful closings are crafted.

Recommended for reading: Nursing essay examples .

In closing, a strong conclusion is a must-have for any piece of writing. It reminds your reader of your main point and leaves them with a lasting impression. Here are some key things to reflect on how to write a good conclusion:

• Restate your thesis in a fresh way.
• Mention your key arguments.
• Leave a lasting thought or question.
• Consider your audience and tailor your ending to them.
• End with a strong statement.

Remember, a good conclusion is not merely about wrapping things up but rather about making your writing truly impactful.

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How To Write A Conclusion For An Essay?

How to write a good conclusion, how to write a conclusion for a college essay.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

• Updated writing tips.
• Added informative tables.
• Added conclusion example.
• Added an article conclusion.
• Essay Conclusions | UMGC. (n.d.). University of Maryland Global Campus. https://www.umgc.edu/current-students/learning-resources/writing-center/writing-resources/writing/essay-conclusions
• How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay | BestColleges. (n.d.). BestColleges.com. https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/how-to-write-a-conclusion/
• Ending the Essay: Conclusions | Harvard College Writing Center. (n.d.). https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions

Conclusions

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain the functions of conclusions, offer strategies for writing effective ones, help you evaluate conclusions you’ve drafted, and suggest approaches to avoid.

About conclusions

Introductions and conclusions can be difficult to write, but they’re worth investing time in. They can have a significant influence on a reader’s experience of your paper.

Just as your introduction acts as a bridge that transports your readers from their own lives into the “place” of your analysis, your conclusion can provide a bridge to help your readers make the transition back to their daily lives. Such a conclusion will help them see why all your analysis and information should matter to them after they put the paper down.

Your conclusion is your chance to have the last word on the subject. The conclusion allows you to have the final say on the issues you have raised in your paper, to synthesize your thoughts, to demonstrate the importance of your ideas, and to propel your reader to a new view of the subject. It is also your opportunity to make a good final impression and to end on a positive note.

Your conclusion can go beyond the confines of the assignment. The conclusion pushes beyond the boundaries of the prompt and allows you to consider broader issues, make new connections, and elaborate on the significance of your findings.

Your conclusion should make your readers glad they read your paper. Your conclusion gives your reader something to take away that will help them see things differently or appreciate your topic in personally relevant ways. It can suggest broader implications that will not only interest your reader, but also enrich your reader’s life in some way. It is your gift to the reader.

Strategies for writing an effective conclusion

One or more of the following strategies may help you write an effective conclusion:

• Play the “So What” Game. If you’re stuck and feel like your conclusion isn’t saying anything new or interesting, ask a friend to read it with you. Whenever you make a statement from your conclusion, ask the friend to say, “So what?” or “Why should anybody care?” Then ponder that question and answer it. Here’s how it might go: You: Basically, I’m just saying that education was important to Douglass. Friend: So what? You: Well, it was important because it was a key to him feeling like a free and equal citizen. Friend: Why should anybody care? You: That’s important because plantation owners tried to keep slaves from being educated so that they could maintain control. When Douglass obtained an education, he undermined that control personally. You can also use this strategy on your own, asking yourself “So What?” as you develop your ideas or your draft.
• Return to the theme or themes in the introduction. This strategy brings the reader full circle. For example, if you begin by describing a scenario, you can end with the same scenario as proof that your essay is helpful in creating a new understanding. You may also refer to the introductory paragraph by using key words or parallel concepts and images that you also used in the introduction.
• Synthesize, don’t summarize. Include a brief summary of the paper’s main points, but don’t simply repeat things that were in your paper. Instead, show your reader how the points you made and the support and examples you used fit together. Pull it all together.
• Include a provocative insight or quotation from the research or reading you did for your paper.
• Propose a course of action, a solution to an issue, or questions for further study. This can redirect your reader’s thought process and help them to apply your info and ideas to their own life or to see the broader implications.
• Point to broader implications. For example, if your paper examines the Greensboro sit-ins or another event in the Civil Rights Movement, you could point out its impact on the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. A paper about the style of writer Virginia Woolf could point to her influence on other writers or on later feminists.

Strategies to avoid

• Beginning with an unnecessary, overused phrase such as “in conclusion,” “in summary,” or “in closing.” Although these phrases can work in speeches, they come across as wooden and trite in writing.
• Stating the thesis for the very first time in the conclusion.
• Introducing a new idea or subtopic in your conclusion.
• Ending with a rephrased thesis statement without any substantive changes.
• Making sentimental, emotional appeals that are out of character with the rest of an analytical paper.
• Including evidence (quotations, statistics, etc.) that should be in the body of the paper.

Four kinds of ineffective conclusions

• The “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It” Conclusion. This conclusion just restates the thesis and is usually painfully short. It does not push the ideas forward. People write this kind of conclusion when they can’t think of anything else to say. Example: In conclusion, Frederick Douglass was, as we have seen, a pioneer in American education, proving that education was a major force for social change with regard to slavery.
• The “Sherlock Holmes” Conclusion. Sometimes writers will state the thesis for the very first time in the conclusion. You might be tempted to use this strategy if you don’t want to give everything away too early in your paper. You may think it would be more dramatic to keep the reader in the dark until the end and then “wow” them with your main idea, as in a Sherlock Holmes mystery. The reader, however, does not expect a mystery, but an analytical discussion of your topic in an academic style, with the main argument (thesis) stated up front. Example: (After a paper that lists numerous incidents from the book but never says what these incidents reveal about Douglass and his views on education): So, as the evidence above demonstrates, Douglass saw education as a way to undermine the slaveholders’ power and also an important step toward freedom.
• The “America the Beautiful”/”I Am Woman”/”We Shall Overcome” Conclusion. This kind of conclusion usually draws on emotion to make its appeal, but while this emotion and even sentimentality may be very heartfelt, it is usually out of character with the rest of an analytical paper. A more sophisticated commentary, rather than emotional praise, would be a more fitting tribute to the topic. Example: Because of the efforts of fine Americans like Frederick Douglass, countless others have seen the shining beacon of light that is education. His example was a torch that lit the way for others. Frederick Douglass was truly an American hero.
• The “Grab Bag” Conclusion. This kind of conclusion includes extra information that the writer found or thought of but couldn’t integrate into the main paper. You may find it hard to leave out details that you discovered after hours of research and thought, but adding random facts and bits of evidence at the end of an otherwise-well-organized essay can just create confusion. Example: In addition to being an educational pioneer, Frederick Douglass provides an interesting case study for masculinity in the American South. He also offers historians an interesting glimpse into slave resistance when he confronts Covey, the overseer. His relationships with female relatives reveal the importance of family in the slave community.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Douglass, Frederick. 1995. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. New York: Dover.

Hamilton College. n.d. “Conclusions.” Writing Center. Accessed June 14, 2019. https://www.hamilton.edu//academics/centers/writing/writing-resources/conclusions .

Holewa, Randa. 2004. “Strategies for Writing a Conclusion.” LEO: Literacy Education Online. Last updated February 19, 2004. https://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/conclude.html.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write a Conclusion for a Literary Analysis Essay

Matt rauscher, 27 jun 2018.

Whether you are writing about a novel, short story, poem or play, the conclusion to your literary analysis essay needs to connect your thesis statement to the end of your essay. Summarizing your points is necessary, but the conclusion needs to synthesize all the different elements of the work you analyzed. Conclusions illustrate the significance of your essay in light of the question you have asked and demonstrate that you have successfully defended your literary argument.

Explore this article

• Restate the Thesis
• Synthesize Your Details
• Look Forward
• Stay Positive

1 Restate the Thesis

A conclusion in a literature paper should begin with a reiteration of your thesis statement, which is your main argument. Inform the reader how you managed to demonstrate your view. If, for example, you are writing about Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird," your thesis may have been that the main character, Scout, has experiences throughout the novel that give her a more mature point of view by book's end. Summarize for the reader how you examined textual evidence to come to that conclusion, which is realized in your thesis statement and then restated in different language in the conclusion.

2 Synthesize Your Details

Each body paragraph in your essay should have broken down your thesis into subsections that you applied to the narrative, poem or play that you are writing about. The conclusion is where you synthesize the support you developed in the essay and form it into a cohesive statement that demonstrates how well you defended your argument. If Scout in "To Kill A Mockingbird" matured greatly throughout the novel, the conclusion reminds the reader of the way you analyzed the book's events, other critiques and theories throughout each paragraph of your essay.

3 Look Forward

Conclusions should not give a definitive answer to the question your thesis asks. Literary analysis does not stop at one particular point in time, and essays like yours keep a work of literature moving forward. A good conclusion will ask what needs to be done to solve the problem you have identified. If "To Kill A Mockingbird" centers on blatant racial problems with the criminal justice system, you could discuss aspects of that small town controversy that still exist today. Do not introduce completely new ideas, but draw from your thesis statement and connect it to a sense of duty that you have hopefully instilled in your readers.

4 Stay Positive

The tone of the conclusion should be positive and achieve a feeling of completion. You can use other literary techniques, like simile or metaphor, and you can refer to on-point contemporary issues or ideas. Advanced students may refer to aspects of literary theory if you are knowledgeable about it. Overall, if you have a well-defended argument throughout the paper, the conclusion should be as strong as the rest of the essay.

• 1 Royal Literary Fund: Conclusions
• 2 Syracuse City Schools: Sample Concluding Paragraph
• 3 The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill: Conclusions

About the Author

Matt Rauscher has been writing professionally since 1996, recently serving as a contributing writer/film critic for "Instinct Magazine." He is also a novelist and co-author of a Chicago city guidebook. In 1997, Rauscher graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.A. in rhetoric.

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How to Write a Good English Literature Essay

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

How do you write a good English Literature essay? Although to an extent this depends on the particular subject you’re writing about, and on the nature of the question your essay is attempting to answer, there are a few general guidelines for how to write a convincing essay – just as there are a few guidelines for writing well in any field.

We at Interesting Literature  call them ‘guidelines’ because we hesitate to use the word ‘rules’, which seems too programmatic. And as the writing habits of successful authors demonstrate, there is no  one way to become a good writer – of essays, novels, poems, or whatever it is you’re setting out to write. The French writer Colette liked to begin her writing day by picking the fleas off her cat.

Edith Sitwell, by all accounts, liked to lie in an open coffin before she began her day’s writing. Friedrich von Schiller kept rotten apples in his desk, claiming he needed the scent of their decay to help him write. (For most student essay-writers, such an aroma is probably allowed to arise in the writing-room more organically, over time.)

We will address our suggestions for successful essay-writing to the average student of English Literature, whether at university or school level. There are many ways to approach the task of essay-writing, and these are just a few pointers for how to write a better English essay – and some of these pointers may also work for other disciplines and subjects, too.

Of course, these guidelines are designed to be of interest to the non-essay-writer too – people who have an interest in the craft of writing in general. If this describes you, we hope you enjoy the list as well. Remember, though, everyone can find writing difficult: as Thomas Mann memorably put it, ‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ Nora Ephron was briefer: ‘I think the hardest thing about writing is writing.’ So, the guidelines for successful essay-writing:

1. Planning is important, but don’t spend too long perfecting a structure that might end up changing.

This may seem like odd advice to kick off with, but the truth is that different approaches work for different students and essayists. You need to find out which method works best for you.

It’s not a bad idea, regardless of whether you’re a big planner or not, to sketch out perhaps a few points on a sheet of paper before you start, but don’t be surprised if you end up moving away from it slightly – or considerably – when you start to write.

Often the most extensively planned essays are the most mechanistic and dull in execution, precisely because the writer has drawn up a plan and refused to deviate from it. What  is a more valuable skill is to be able to sense when your argument may be starting to go off-topic, or your point is getting out of hand,  as you write . (For help on this, see point 5 below.)

We might even say that when it comes to knowing how to write a good English Literature essay,  practising  is more important than planning.

2. Make room for close analysis of the text, or texts.

Whilst it’s true that some first-class or A-grade essays will be impressive without containing any close reading as such, most of the highest-scoring and most sophisticated essays tend to zoom in on the text and examine its language and imagery closely in the course of the argument. (Close reading of literary texts arises from theology and the analysis of holy scripture, but really became a ‘thing’ in literary criticism in the early twentieth century, when T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, William Empson, and other influential essayists started to subject the poem or novel to close scrutiny.)

Close reading has two distinct advantages: it increases the specificity of your argument (so you can’t be so easily accused of generalising a point), and it improves your chances of pointing up something about the text which none of the other essays your marker is reading will have said. For instance, take In Memoriam  (1850), which is a long Victorian poem by the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson about his grief following the death of his close friend, Arthur Hallam, in the early 1830s.

When answering a question about the representation of religious faith in Tennyson’s poem  In Memoriam  (1850), how might you write a particularly brilliant essay about this theme? Anyone can make a general point about the poet’s crisis of faith; but to look closely at the language used gives you the chance to show  how the poet portrays this.

For instance, consider this stanza, which conveys the poet’s doubt:

A solid and perfectly competent essay might cite this stanza in support of the claim that Tennyson is finding it increasingly difficult to have faith in God (following the untimely and senseless death of his friend, Arthur Hallam). But there are several ways of then doing something more with it. For instance, you might get close to the poem’s imagery, and show how Tennyson conveys this idea, through the image of the ‘altar-stairs’ associated with religious worship and the idea of the stairs leading ‘thro’ darkness’ towards God.

In other words, Tennyson sees faith as a matter of groping through the darkness, trusting in God without having evidence that he is there. If you like, it’s a matter of ‘blind faith’. That would be a good reading. Now, here’s how to make a good English essay on this subject even better: one might look at how the word ‘falter’ – which encapsulates Tennyson’s stumbling faith – disperses into ‘falling’ and ‘altar’ in the succeeding lines. The word ‘falter’, we might say, itself falters or falls apart.

That is doing more than just interpreting the words: it’s being a highly careful reader of the poetry and showing how attentive to the language of the poetry you can be – all the while answering the question, about how the poem portrays the idea of faith. So, read and then reread the text you’re writing about – and be sensitive to such nuances of language and style.

The best way to  become attuned to such nuances is revealed in point 5. We might summarise this point as follows: when it comes to knowing how to write a persuasive English Literature essay, it’s one thing to have a broad and overarching argument, but don’t be afraid to use the  microscope as well as the telescope.

3. Provide several pieces of evidence where possible.

Many essays have a point to make and make it, tacking on a single piece of evidence from the text (or from beyond the text, e.g. a critical, historical, or biographical source) in the hope that this will be enough to make the point convincing.

‘State, quote, explain’ is the Holy Trinity of the Paragraph for many. What’s wrong with it? For one thing, this approach is too formulaic and basic for many arguments. Is one quotation enough to support a point? It’s often a matter of degree, and although one piece of evidence is better than none, two or three pieces will be even more persuasive.

After all, in a court of law a single eyewitness account won’t be enough to convict the accused of the crime, and even a confession from the accused would carry more weight if it comes supported by other, objective evidence (e.g. DNA, fingerprints, and so on).

Let’s go back to the example about Tennyson’s faith in his poem  In Memoriam  mentioned above. Perhaps you don’t find the end of the poem convincing – when the poet claims to have rediscovered his Christian faith and to have overcome his grief at the loss of his friend.

You can find examples from the end of the poem to suggest your reading of the poet’s insincerity may have validity, but looking at sources beyond the poem – e.g. a good edition of the text, which will contain biographical and critical information – may help you to find a clinching piece of evidence to support your reading.

And, sure enough, Tennyson is reported to have said of  In Memoriam : ‘It’s too hopeful, this poem, more than I am myself.’ And there we have it: much more convincing than simply positing your reading of the poem with a few ambiguous quotations from the poem itself.

Of course, this rule also works in reverse: if you want to argue, for instance, that T. S. Eliot’s  The Waste Land is overwhelmingly inspired by the poet’s unhappy marriage to his first wife, then using a decent biographical source makes sense – but if you didn’t show evidence for this idea from the poem itself (see point 2), all you’ve got is a vague, general link between the poet’s life and his work.

Show  how the poet’s marriage is reflected in the work, e.g. through men and women’s relationships throughout the poem being shown as empty, soulless, and unhappy. In other words, when setting out to write a good English essay about any text, don’t be afraid to  pile on  the evidence – though be sensible, a handful of quotations or examples should be more than enough to make your point convincing.

4. Avoid tentative or speculative phrasing.

Many essays tend to suffer from the above problem of a lack of evidence, so the point fails to convince. This has a knock-on effect: often the student making the point doesn’t sound especially convinced by it either. This leaks out in the telling use of, and reliance on, certain uncertain  phrases: ‘Tennyson might have’ or ‘perhaps Harper Lee wrote this to portray’ or ‘it can be argued that’.

An English university professor used to write in the margins of an essay which used this last phrase, ‘What  can’t be argued?’

This is a fair criticism: anything can be argued (badly), but it depends on what evidence you can bring to bear on it (point 3) as to whether it will be a persuasive argument. (Arguing that the plays of Shakespeare were written by a Martian who came down to Earth and ingratiated himself with the world of Elizabethan theatre is a theory that can be argued, though few would take it seriously. We wish we could say ‘none’, but that’s a story for another day.)

Many essay-writers, because they’re aware that texts are often open-ended and invite multiple interpretations (as almost all great works of literature invariably do), think that writing ‘it can be argued’ acknowledges the text’s rich layering of meaning and is therefore valid.

Whilst this is certainly a fact – texts are open-ended and can be read in wildly different ways – the phrase ‘it can be argued’ is best used sparingly if at all. It should be taken as true that your interpretation is, at bottom, probably unprovable. What would it mean to ‘prove’ a reading as correct, anyway? Because you found evidence that the author intended the same thing as you’ve argued of their text? Tennyson wrote in a letter, ‘I wrote In Memoriam  because…’?

But the author might have lied about it (e.g. in an attempt to dissuade people from looking too much into their private life), or they might have changed their mind (to go back to the example of  The Waste Land : T. S. Eliot championed the idea of poetic impersonality in an essay of 1919, but years later he described  The Waste Land as ‘only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life’ – hardly impersonal, then).

Texts – and their writers – can often be contradictory, or cagey about their meaning. But we as critics have to act responsibly when writing about literary texts in any good English essay or exam answer. We need to argue honestly, and sincerely – and not use what Wikipedia calls ‘weasel words’ or hedging expressions.

So, if nothing is utterly provable, all that remains is to make the strongest possible case you can with the evidence available. You do this, not only through marshalling the evidence in an effective way, but by writing in a confident voice when making your case. Fundamentally, ‘There is evidence to suggest that’ says more or less the same thing as ‘It can be argued’, but it foregrounds the  evidence rather than the argument, so is preferable as a phrase.

This point might be summarised by saying: the best way to write a good English Literature essay is to be honest about the reading you’re putting forward, so you can be confident in your interpretation and use clear, bold language. (‘Bold’ is good, but don’t get too cocky, of course…)

5. Read the work of other critics.

This might be viewed as the Holy Grail of good essay-writing tips, since it is perhaps the single most effective way to improve your own writing. Even if you’re writing an essay as part of school coursework rather than a university degree, and don’t need to research other critics for your essay, it’s worth finding a good writer of literary criticism and reading their work. Why is this worth doing?

Published criticism has at least one thing in its favour, at least if it’s published by an academic press or has appeared in an academic journal, and that is that it’s most probably been peer-reviewed, meaning that other academics have read it, closely studied its argument, checked it for errors or inaccuracies, and helped to ensure that it is expressed in a fluent, clear, and effective way.

If you’re serious about finding out how to write a better English essay, then you need to study how successful writers in the genre do it. And essay-writing is a genre, the same as novel-writing or poetry. But why will reading criticism help you? Because the critics you read can show you how to do all of the above: how to present a close reading of a poem, how to advance an argument that is not speculative or tentative yet not over-confident, how to use evidence from the text to make your argument more persuasive.

And, the more you read of other critics – a page a night, say, over a few months – the better you’ll get. It’s like textual osmosis: a little bit of their style will rub off on you, and every writer learns by the examples of other writers.

As T. S. Eliot himself said, ‘The poem which is absolutely original is absolutely bad.’ Don’t get precious about your own distinctive writing style and become afraid you’ll lose it. You can’t  gain a truly original style before you’ve looked at other people’s and worked out what you like and what you can ‘steal’ for your own ends.

We say ‘steal’, but this is not the same as saying that plagiarism is okay, of course. But consider this example. You read an accessible book on Shakespeare’s language and the author makes a point about rhymes in Shakespeare. When you’re working on your essay on the poetry of Christina Rossetti, you notice a similar use of rhyme, and remember the point made by the Shakespeare critic.

This is not plagiarising a point but applying it independently to another writer. It shows independent interpretive skills and an ability to understand and apply what you have read. This is another of the advantages of reading critics, so this would be our final piece of advice for learning how to write a good English essay: find a critic whose style you like, and study their craft.

If you’re looking for suggestions, we can recommend a few favourites: Christopher Ricks, whose  The Force of Poetry is a tour de force; Jonathan Bate, whose  The Genius of Shakespeare , although written for a general rather than academic audience, is written by a leading Shakespeare scholar and academic; and Helen Gardner, whose  The Art of T. S. Eliot , whilst dated (it came out in 1949), is a wonderfully lucid and articulate analysis of Eliot’s poetry.

James Wood’s How Fiction Works  is also a fine example of lucid prose and how to close-read literary texts. Doubtless readers of  Interesting Literature will have their own favourites to suggest in the comments, so do check those out, as these are just three personal favourites. What’s your favourite work of literary scholarship/criticism? Suggestions please.

Much of all this may strike you as common sense, but even the most commonsensical advice can go out of your mind when you have a piece of coursework to write, or an exam to revise for. We hope these suggestions help to remind you of some of the key tenets of good essay-writing practice – though remember, these aren’t so much commandments as recommendations. No one can ‘tell’ you how to write a good English Literature essay as such.

But it can be learned. And remember, be interesting – find the things in the poems or plays or novels which really ignite your enthusiasm. As John Mortimer said, ‘The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.’

Finally, good luck – and happy writing!

And if you enjoyed these tips for how to write a persuasive English essay, check out our advice for how to remember things for exams  and our tips for becoming a better close reader of poetry .

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30 thoughts on “How to Write a Good English Literature Essay”

You must have taken AP Literature. I’m always saying these same points to my students.

I also think a crucial part of excellent essay writing that too many students do not realize is that not every point or interpretation needs to be addressed. When offered the chance to write your interpretation of a work of literature, it is important to note that there of course are many but your essay should choose one and focus evidence on this one view rather than attempting to include all views and evidence to back up each view.

Reblogged this on SocioTech'nowledge .

Not a bad effort…not at all! (Did you intend “subject” instead of “object” in numbered paragraph two, line seven?”

Oops! I did indeed – many thanks for spotting. Duly corrected ;)

That’s what comes of writing about philosophy and the subject/object for another post at the same time!

Reblogged this on Scribing English .

• Pingback: Recommended Resource: Interesting Literature.com & how to write an essay | Write Out Loud

Great post on essay writing! I’ve shared a post about this and about the blog site in general which you can look at here: http://writeoutloudblog.com/2015/01/13/recommended-resource-interesting-literature-com-how-to-write-an-essay/

All of these are very good points – especially I like 2 and 5. I’d like to read the essay on the Martian who wrote Shakespeare’s plays).

Reblogged this on Uniqely Mustered and commented: Dedicate this to all upcoming writers and lovers of Writing!

I shall take this as my New Year boost in Writing Essays. Please try to visit often for corrections,advise and criticisms.

Reblogged this on Blue Banana Bread .

Reblogged this on worldsinthenet .

All very good points, but numbers 2 and 4 are especially interesting.

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Reblogged this on rainniewu .

Reblogged this on pixcdrinks .

• Pingback: How to Write a Good English Essay? Interesting Literature | EngLL.Com

Great post. Interesting infographic how to write an argumentative essay http://www.essay-profy.com/blog/how-to-write-an-essay-writing-an-argumentative-essay/

Reblogged this on DISTINCT CHARACTER and commented: Good Tips

Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner and commented: This could be applied to novel or short story writing as well.

Reblogged this on rosetech67 and commented: Useful, albeit maybe a bit late for me :-)

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such a nice pieace of content you shared in this write up about “How to Write a Good English Essay” going to share on another useful resource that is

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A well rounded summary on all steps to keep in mind while starting on writing. There are many new avenues available though. Benefit from the writing options of the 21st century from here, i loved it! http://authenticwritingservices.com

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17 Essay Conclusion Examples (Copy and Paste)

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Essay conclusions are not just extra filler. They are important because they tie together your arguments, then give you the chance to forcefully drive your point home.

I created the 5 Cs conclusion method to help you write essay conclusions:

I’ve previously produced the video below on how to write a conclusion that goes over the above image.

The video follows the 5 C’s method ( you can read about it in this post ), which doesn’t perfectly match each of the below copy-and-paste conclusion examples, but the principles are similar, and can help you to write your own strong conclusion:

💡 New! Try this AI Prompt to Generate a Sample 5Cs Conclusion This is my essay: [INSERT ESSAY WITHOUT THE CONCLUSION]. I want you to write a conclusion for this essay. In the first sentence of the conclusion, return to a statement I made in the introduction. In the second sentence, reiterate the thesis statement I have used. In the third sentence, clarify how my final position is relevant to the Essay Question, which is [ESSAY QUESTION]. In the fourth sentence, explain who should be interested in my findings. In the fifth sentence, end by noting in one final, engaging sentence why this topic is of such importance.

Remember: The prompt can help you generate samples but you can’t submit AI text for assessment. Make sure you write your conclusion in your own words.

Essay Conclusion Examples

Below is a range of copy-and-paste essay conclusions with gaps for you to fill-in your topic and key arguments. Browse through for one you like (there are 17 for argumentative, expository, compare and contrast, and critical essays). Once you’ve found one you like, copy it and add-in the key points to make it your own.

1. Argumentative Essay Conclusions

The arguments presented in this essay demonstrate the significant importance of _____________. While there are some strong counterarguments, such as ____________, it remains clear that the benefits/merits of _____________ far outweigh the potential downsides. The evidence presented throughout the essay strongly support _____________. In the coming years, _____________ will be increasingly important. Therefore, continual advocacy for the position presented in this essay will be necessary, especially due to its significant implications for _____________.

Version 1 Filled-In

The arguments presented in this essay demonstrate the significant importance of fighting climate change. While there are some strong counterarguments, such as the claim that it is too late to stop catastrophic change, it remains clear that the merits of taking drastic action far outweigh the potential downsides. The evidence presented throughout the essay strongly support the claim that we can at least mitigate the worst effects. In the coming years, intergovernmental worldwide agreements will be increasingly important. Therefore, continual advocacy for the position presented in this essay will be necessary, especially due to its significant implications for humankind.

As this essay has shown, it is clear that the debate surrounding _____________ is multifaceted and highly complex. While there are strong arguments opposing the position that _____________, there remains overwhelming evidence to support the claim that _____________. A careful analysis of the empirical evidence suggests that _____________ not only leads to ____________, but it may also be a necessity for _____________. Moving forward, _____________ should be a priority for all stakeholders involved, as it promises a better future for _____________. The focus should now shift towards how best to integrate _____________ more effectively into society.

Version 2 Filled-In

As this essay has shown, it is clear that the debate surrounding climate change is multifaceted and highly complex. While there are strong arguments opposing the position that we should fight climate change, there remains overwhelming evidence to support the claim that action can mitigate the worst effects. A careful analysis of the empirical evidence suggests that strong action not only leads to better economic outcomes in the long term, but it may also be a necessity for preventing climate-related deaths. Moving forward, carbon emission mitigation should be a priority for all stakeholders involved, as it promises a better future for all. The focus should now shift towards how best to integrate smart climate policies more effectively into society.

Based upon the preponderance of evidence, it is evident that _____________ holds the potential to significantly alter/improve _____________. The counterarguments, while noteworthy, fail to diminish the compelling case for _____________. Following an examination of both sides of the argument, it has become clear that _____________ presents the most effective solution/approach to _____________. Consequently, it is imperative that society acknowledge the value of _____________ for developing a better  _____________. Failing to address this topic could lead to negative outcomes, including _____________.

Version 3 Filled-In

Based upon the preponderance of evidence, it is evident that addressing climate change holds the potential to significantly improve the future of society. The counterarguments, while noteworthy, fail to diminish the compelling case for immediate climate action. Following an examination of both sides of the argument, it has become clear that widespread and urgent social action presents the most effective solution to this pressing problem. Consequently, it is imperative that society acknowledge the value of taking immediate action for developing a better environment for future generations. Failing to address this topic could lead to negative outcomes, including more extreme climate events and greater economic externalities.

See Also: Examples of Counterarguments

On the balance of evidence, there is an overwhelming case for _____________. While the counterarguments offer valid points that are worth examining, they do not outweigh or overcome the argument that _____________. An evaluation of both perspectives on this topic concludes that _____________ is the most sufficient option for  _____________. The implications of embracing _____________ do not only have immediate benefits, but they also pave the way for a more _____________. Therefore, the solution of _____________ should be actively pursued by _____________.

Version 4 Filled-In

On the balance of evidence, there is an overwhelming case for immediate tax-based action to mitigate the effects of climate change. While the counterarguments offer valid points that are worth examining, they do not outweigh or overcome the argument that action is urgently necessary. An evaluation of both perspectives on this topic concludes that taking societal-wide action is the most sufficient option for  achieving the best results. The implications of embracing a society-wide approach like a carbon tax do not only have immediate benefits, but they also pave the way for a more healthy future. Therefore, the solution of a carbon tax or equivalent policy should be actively pursued by governments.

2. Expository Essay Conclusions

Overall, it is evident that _____________ plays a crucial role in _____________. The analysis presented in this essay demonstrates the clear impact of _____________ on _____________. By understanding the key facts about _____________, practitioners/society are better equipped to navigate _____________. Moving forward, further exploration of _____________ will yield additional insights and information about _____________. As such, _____________ should remain a focal point for further discussions and studies on _____________.

Overall, it is evident that social media plays a crucial role in harming teenagers’ mental health. The analysis presented in this essay demonstrates the clear impact of social media on young people. By understanding the key facts about the ways social media cause young people to experience body dysmorphia, teachers and parents are better equipped to help young people navigate online spaces. Moving forward, further exploration of the ways social media cause harm will yield additional insights and information about how it can be more sufficiently regulated. As such, the effects of social media on youth should remain a focal point for further discussions and studies on youth mental health.

To conclude, this essay has explored the multi-faceted aspects of _____________. Through a careful examination of _____________, this essay has illuminated its significant influence on _____________. This understanding allows society to appreciate the idea that _____________. As research continues to emerge, the importance of _____________ will only continue to grow. Therefore, an understanding of _____________ is not merely desirable, but imperative for _____________.

To conclude, this essay has explored the multi-faceted aspects of globalization. Through a careful examination of globalization, this essay has illuminated its significant influence on the economy, cultures, and society. This understanding allows society to appreciate the idea that globalization has both positive and negative effects. As research continues to emerge, the importance of studying globalization will only continue to grow. Therefore, an understanding of globalization’s effects is not merely desirable, but imperative for judging whether it is good or bad.

Reflecting on the discussion, it is clear that _____________ serves a pivotal role in _____________. By delving into the intricacies of _____________, we have gained valuable insights into its impact and significance. This knowledge will undoubtedly serve as a guiding principle in _____________. Moving forward, it is paramount to remain open to further explorations and studies on _____________. In this way, our understanding and appreciation of _____________ can only deepen and expand.

Reflecting on the discussion, it is clear that mass media serves a pivotal role in shaping public opinion. By delving into the intricacies of mass media, we have gained valuable insights into its impact and significance. This knowledge will undoubtedly serve as a guiding principle in shaping the media landscape. Moving forward, it is paramount to remain open to further explorations and studies on how mass media impacts society. In this way, our understanding and appreciation of mass media’s impacts can only deepen and expand.

In conclusion, this essay has shed light on the importance of _____________ in the context of _____________. The evidence and analysis provided underscore the profound effect _____________ has on _____________. The knowledge gained from exploring _____________ will undoubtedly contribute to more informed and effective decisions in _____________. As we continue to progress, the significance of understanding _____________ will remain paramount. Hence, we should strive to deepen our knowledge of _____________ to better navigate and influence _____________.

In conclusion, this essay has shed light on the importance of bedside manner in the context of nursing. The evidence and analysis provided underscore the profound effect compassionate bedside manner has on patient outcome. The knowledge gained from exploring nurses’ bedside manner will undoubtedly contribute to more informed and effective decisions in nursing practice. As we continue to progress, the significance of understanding nurses’ bedside manner will remain paramount. Hence, we should strive to deepen our knowledge of this topic to better navigate and influence patient outcomes.

See More: How to Write an Expository Essay

3. Compare and Contrast Essay Conclusion

While both _____________ and _____________ have similarities such as _____________, they also have some very important differences in areas like _____________. Through this comparative analysis, a broader understanding of _____________ and _____________ has been attained. The choice between the two will largely depend on _____________. For example, as highlighted in the essay, ____________. Despite their differences, both _____________ and _____________ have value in different situations.

While both macrosociology and microsociology have similarities such as their foci on how society is structured, they also have some very important differences in areas like their differing approaches to research methodologies. Through this comparative analysis, a broader understanding of macrosociology and microsociology has been attained. The choice between the two will largely depend on the researcher’s perspective on how society works. For example, as highlighted in the essay, microsociology is much more concerned with individuals’ experiences while macrosociology is more concerned with social structures. Despite their differences, both macrosociology and microsociology have value in different situations.

It is clear that _____________ and _____________, while seeming to be different, have shared characteristics in _____________. On the other hand, their contrasts in _____________ shed light on their unique features. The analysis provides a more nuanced comprehension of these subjects. In choosing between the two, consideration should be given to _____________. Despite their disparities, it’s crucial to acknowledge the importance of both when it comes to _____________.

It is clear that behaviorism and consructivism, while seeming to be different, have shared characteristics in their foci on knowledge acquisition over time. On the other hand, their contrasts in ideas about the role of experience in learning shed light on their unique features. The analysis provides a more nuanced comprehension of these subjects. In choosing between the two, consideration should be given to which approach works best in which situation. Despite their disparities, it’s crucial to acknowledge the importance of both when it comes to student education.

Reflecting on the points discussed, it’s evident that _____________ and _____________ share similarities such as _____________, while also demonstrating unique differences, particularly in _____________. The preference for one over the other would typically depend on factors such as _____________. Yet, regardless of their distinctions, both _____________ and _____________ play integral roles in their respective areas, significantly contributing to _____________.

Reflecting on the points discussed, it’s evident that red and orange share similarities such as the fact they are both ‘hot colors’, while also demonstrating unique differences, particularly in their social meaning (red meaning danger and orange warmth). The preference for one over the other would typically depend on factors such as personal taste. Yet, regardless of their distinctions, both red and orange play integral roles in their respective areas, significantly contributing to color theory.

Ultimately, the comparison and contrast of _____________ and _____________ have revealed intriguing similarities and notable differences. Differences such as _____________ give deeper insights into their unique and shared qualities. When it comes to choosing between them, _____________ will likely be a deciding factor. Despite these differences, it is important to remember that both _____________ and _____________ hold significant value within the context of _____________, and each contributes to _____________ in its own unique way.

Ultimately, the comparison and contrast of driving and flying have revealed intriguing similarities and notable differences. Differences such as their differing speed to destination give deeper insights into their unique and shared qualities. When it comes to choosing between them, urgency to arrive at the destination will likely be a deciding factor. Despite these differences, it is important to remember that both driving and flying hold significant value within the context of air transit, and each contributes to facilitating movement in its own unique way.

See Here for More Compare and Contrast Essay Examples

4. Critical Essay Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of _____________ has unveiled critical aspects related to _____________. While there are strengths in _____________, its limitations are equally telling. This critique provides a more informed perspective on _____________, revealing that there is much more beneath the surface. Moving forward, the understanding of _____________ should evolve, considering both its merits and flaws.

In conclusion, the analysis of flow theory has unveiled critical aspects related to motivation and focus. While there are strengths in achieving a flow state, its limitations are equally telling. This critique provides a more informed perspective on how humans achieve motivation, revealing that there is much more beneath the surface. Moving forward, the understanding of flow theory of motivation should evolve, considering both its merits and flaws.

To conclude, this critical examination of _____________ sheds light on its multi-dimensional nature. While _____________ presents notable advantages, it is not without its drawbacks. This in-depth critique offers a comprehensive understanding of _____________. Therefore, future engagements with _____________ should involve a balanced consideration of its strengths and weaknesses.

To conclude, this critical examination of postmodern art sheds light on its multi-dimensional nature. While postmodernism presents notable advantages, it is not without its drawbacks. This in-depth critique offers a comprehensive understanding of how it has contributed to the arts over the past 50 years. Therefore, future engagements with postmodern art should involve a balanced consideration of its strengths and weaknesses.

Upon reflection, the critique of _____________ uncovers profound insights into its underlying intricacies. Despite its positive aspects such as ________, it’s impossible to overlook its shortcomings. This analysis provides a nuanced understanding of _____________, highlighting the necessity for a balanced approach in future interactions. Indeed, both the strengths and weaknesses of _____________ should be taken into account when considering ____________.

Upon reflection, the critique of marxism uncovers profound insights into its underlying intricacies. Despite its positive aspects such as its ability to critique exploitation of labor, it’s impossible to overlook its shortcomings. This analysis provides a nuanced understanding of marxism’s harmful effects when used as an economic theory, highlighting the necessity for a balanced approach in future interactions. Indeed, both the strengths and weaknesses of marxism should be taken into account when considering the use of its ideas in real life.

Ultimately, this critique of _____________ offers a detailed look into its advantages and disadvantages. The strengths of _____________ such as __________ are significant, yet its limitations such as _________ are not insignificant. This balanced analysis not only offers a deeper understanding of _____________ but also underscores the importance of critical evaluation. Hence, it’s crucial that future discussions around _____________ continue to embrace this balanced approach.

Ultimately, this critique of artificial intelligence offers a detailed look into its advantages and disadvantages. The strengths of artificial intelligence, such as its ability to improve productivity are significant, yet its limitations such as the possibility of mass job losses are not insignificant. This balanced analysis not only offers a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence but also underscores the importance of critical evaluation. Hence, it’s crucial that future discussions around the regulation of artificial intelligence continue to embrace this balanced approach.

This article promised 17 essay conclusions, and this one you are reading now is the twenty-first. This last conclusion demonstrates that the very best essay conclusions are written uniquely, from scratch, in order to perfectly cater the conclusion to the topic. A good conclusion will tie together all the key points you made in your essay and forcefully drive home the importance or relevance of your argument, thesis statement, or simply your topic so the reader is left with one strong final point to ponder.

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How to Conclude an Essay (with Examples)

Last Updated: July 22, 2024 Fact Checked

Writing a Strong Conclusion

What to avoid, brainstorming tricks.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams and by wikiHow staff writer, Aly Rusciano . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,224,766 times.

So, you’ve written an outstanding essay and couldn’t be more proud. But now you have to write the final paragraph. The conclusion simply summarizes what you’ve already written, right? Well, not exactly. Your essay’s conclusion should be a bit more finessed than that. Luckily, you’ve come to the perfect place to learn how to write a conclusion. We’ve put together this guide to fill you in on everything you should and shouldn’t do when ending an essay. Follow our advice, and you’ll have a stellar conclusion worthy of an A+ in no time.

Tips for Ending an Essay

• Rephrase your thesis to include in your final paragraph to bring the essay full circle.
• End your essay with a call to action, warning, or image to make your argument meaningful.
• Keep your conclusion concise and to the point, so you don’t lose a reader’s attention.
• Do your best to avoid adding new information to your conclusion and only emphasize points you’ve already made in your essay.

• “All in all”
• “Ultimately”
• “Furthermore”
• “As a consequence”
• “As a result”

• Make sure to write your main points in a new and unique way to avoid repetition.

• Let’s say this is your original thesis statement: “Allowing students to visit the library during lunch improves campus life and supports academic achievement.”
• Restating your thesis for your conclusion could look like this: “Evidence shows students who have access to their school’s library during lunch check out more books and are more likely to complete their homework.”
• The restated thesis has the same sentiment as the original while also summarizing other points of the essay.

• “When you use plastic water bottles, you pollute the ocean. Switch to using a glass or metal water bottle instead. The planet and sea turtles will thank you.”
• “The average person spends roughly 7 hours on their phone a day, so there’s no wonder cybersickness is plaguing all generations.”
• “Imagine walking on the beach, except the soft sand is made up of cigarette butts. They burn your feet but keep washing in with the tide. If we don’t clean up the ocean, this will be our reality.”
• “ Lost is not only a show that changed the course of television, but it’s also a reflection of humanity as a whole.”
• “If action isn’t taken to end climate change today, the global temperature will dangerously rise from 4.5 to 8 °F (−15.3 to −13.3 °C) by 2100.”

• Focus on your essay's most prevalent or important parts. What key points do you want readers to take away or remember about your essay?

• For instance, instead of writing, “That’s why I think that Abraham Lincoln was the best American President,” write, “That’s why Abraham Lincoln was the best American President.”
• There’s no room for ifs, ands, or buts—your opinion matters and doesn’t need to be apologized for!

• For instance, words like “firstly,” “secondly,” and “thirdly” may be great transition statements for body paragraphs but are unnecessary in a conclusion.

• For instance, say you began your essay with the idea that humanity’s small sense of sense stems from space’s vast size. Try returning to this idea in the conclusion by emphasizing that as human knowledge grows, space becomes smaller.

• For example, you could extend an essay on the television show Orange is the New Black by bringing up the culture of imprisonment in America.

Community Q&A

Reader Videos

Share a quick video tip and help bring articles to life with your friendly advice. Your insights could make a real difference and help millions of people!

• Always review your essay after writing it for proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and don’t be afraid to revise. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Have somebody else proofread your essay before turning it in. The other person will often be able to see errors you may have missed!

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• ↑ https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/helps/self-help-resources/grammar/transition-signals
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/argument_papers/conclusions.html
• ↑ http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/conclude.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions
• ↑ https://www.pittsfordschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=542&dataid=4677&FileName=conclusions1.pdf
• ↑ https://www.cuyamaca.edu/student-support/tutoring-center/files/student-resources/how-to-write-a-good-conclusion.pdf
• ↑ https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185935

About This Article

To end an essay, start your conclusion with a phrase that makes it clear your essay is coming to a close, like "In summary," or "All things considered." Then, use a few sentences to briefly summarize the main points of your essay by rephrasing the topic sentences of your body paragraphs. Finally, end your conclusion with a call to action that encourages your readers to do something or learn more about your topic. In general, try to keep your conclusion between 5 and 7 sentences long. For more tips from our English co-author, like how to avoid common pitfalls when writing an essay conclusion, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Essay Structure: How to Write a Conclusion | Essay Writing Part 5

Guide Chapters

• 1. Thesis statement
• 2. Introduction structure
• 3. Topic sentence
• 4. Body paragraph structure
• 5. Conclusion

This post, How to Write a Conclusion, is part 4 in our Essay Writing Series.

Some common questions students have about essay structure are:

• How do I develop strong essay structure?
• Are conclusions important for essay structure?
• Can a conclusion be too long or too short?
• What should a conclusion include?
• How do I write a good conclusion?

In this post we’ll discuss the theory behind essay structure and show you why conclusions, are essential. We will then give you a step-by-guide for writing a Band 6 conclusion for your killer essay!

Table of Contents

1. Essential Essay Structure 2. Sustained Arguments and Conclusions 3. Recapping Essay Structure 4. Structuring Your Conclusion 5. How to Write a Conclusion – A Step-by-Step Guide

If you are unsure how to write an introduction or topic sentences, then you should read the previous posts in the series:

• Introduction Structure: How to Write a Thesis Statement | Essay Writing Part 1
• Introduction Structure: How to Write a Thematic Framework | Essay Writing Part 2
• Paragraph Structure: How to Write a Topic Sentence | Essay Writing Part 3   
• Paragraph Structure: How to Write a Body Paragraph | Essay Writing Part 4

These posts give you step-by-step advice for writing well structured essays that will score you Band 6. They will provide the foundations of essay structure that we will conclude (pun intended!) in this post.

Now, let’s discuss how to develop a conclusion that sustains your argument and concludes it effectively and memorably before walking through an easy step-by-step process for writing fabulous conclusions.

Let’s go!

Essential essay structure: How to write a conclusion | Essay writing Part 5

Essay writing is not an innate skill, it is a craft that it is learned and refined through practice and dedication. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, writing is something you need to work at to perfect. Writing good conclusions takes practice. But before you begin practising, you should learn how to write them effectively.

Let’s see how Matrix Students are taught how to write conclusions.

What is a conclusion?

A conclusion is the part of an essay that summarises your argument and recaps what has come before it.

A conclusion needs to do three things:

• Restate the thesis : It needs to reassert you overarching argument, first;
• Recap the key ideas : It needs to revisit the key ideas from the essay and touch on the logic for their inclusion or relevance.
• Make a closing statement : It needs to include a statement that explains your final thought on the matter, a statement on what you have taken away from writing the essay, or perhaps provide an overall statement about studying the text or Module you have been engaging with.

Think about that.

A conclusion is a simple thing, but very important to your argument. So, you have to get it right!

Let’s discuss how to do that.

Conclusions, and sustained arguments – Thinking for the reader

A good speech or a good essay is essentially manipulative. It is crafted to convince your readers of a position or belief that you have. To do this effectively, you need to present information in an order and fashion that makes it digestible and logical.

You want to do the reader’s thinking for them!

This is a crucial part of readability that Matrix students learn. Writing that is readable presents the information the composer feels is relevant to an audience, and connects it together in a way that makes it seem unified and logical.

A good essay keeps a reader in it, rather than jarring them out of it. You don’t want a reader to stop reading and question your ideas while they are in the middle of the essay. This means that you have a logical flaw, or part of the structure and writing is convoluted in a manner that makes it difficult for your reader to follow your argument.

Remember, it’s fine for people to question your ideas and disagree with them, but you want to present your position in a clear and logical fashion first, so they have your whole perspective before critiquing it. A concise but comprehensive conclusion is essential for this.

A conclusion restates all the key parts of your argument to leave a complete picture in your reader’s mind.

So, your essay needs to be easy to read, and your conclusion has to sum things up for the reader so they can think about the broader picture you’ve argued. It is important that they do not struggle to remember the various parts of the argument.

Before we jump into writing conclusions, let’s recap the structure of an essay. This will help us focus on the logical role of the conclusion while we write it.

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Recapping essay structure

In the previous posts in this series we discussed how the key parts of the introduction and body work together to produce a sustained argument. Let’s see how that worked again to understand the role of the conclusion:

As you can see, there are clear connections between the different parts of the essay.

The Thesis and Thematic Framework connect to the Topic Sentences and Linking Statements in the Body . But importantly, all of these structural elements are reasserted and connected in the conclusion.

The conclusion ties all of your ideas together.

By the time a reader reaches the conclusion, they may have forgotten key parts of your argument. The best way to reassert your ideas so they remain fresh in a reader’s mind when they finish reading your essay, is to use the logical structure of the introduction.

Let’s have a look at how to do that.

Structuring your conclusion

A conclusion needs to be structured to remind the audience what they have encountered, what the logic of it was, and then present them with a final, conclusive remark.

To do this effectively there are some important rules to follow:

• Your conclusion needs to be at least 3 sentences – You’re summarising an argument, not making a point;
• You must reassert your thesis in the first sentence – Make it clear what you have been arguing!
• Don’t try and cram your themes into one sentence – You have presented a carefully structured argument that is logical and develops several complex ideas. It is often impossible to boil this down to one sentence, use two or, even, three if you need to be clear. Clarity is essential.
• Don’t ramble – You must be concise. Even though you need to recap a significant amount of information, you need to be efficient. Aim to keep your conclusion shorter than your introduction.
• Aim to keep your conclusion under 5 sentences – Your conclusion must be memorable. If it is too long, a reader will struggle to hold the essence of your essay in their minds as their final interaction with your argument.

Think about those points for a moment.

So, what does this mean for you when you write conclusions?

Let’s have a look.

Restate the thesis

The first part of the conclusion needs to reassert the key idea that you have argued. This means it needs to restate your thesis statement. But we don’t want to merely say the exact same thing we have already said. No. We want to paraphrase our central argument in an authoritative way.

To sound authoritative it is important to avoid low modality expressions. Low modality words reflect uncertainty – for example, “may,” “can,” might”. We need to make clear statements so we need high modality words – for example, “is”, “are”, “will.” Don’t say, “a reader might understand.” Say “the composer compels the audience to understand.”

Recap the themes

You need to restate your ideas in a logical manner. You don’t want to merely say “I have discussed theme 1, theme 2, and theme 3.” This doesn’t develop a sustained argument. If you say this, a reader will have to glance back to your introduction and body to remember your exact argument.

These are moments where you are taking the reader away from your argument. In those moments you just dropped two to three marks. That is a potential change from a Band 5 to a Band 6!

Instead, you want quickly recap your themes in a way that conveys the logic of your argument. Try saying “I discussed themes 1 and 2 because they support this part of my thesis. I looked at theme 3 because it supports a different way of looking at the same idea.” This structure allows you to maintain any of the nuance you have structured into your essay.

Make a final statement

You need to leave the reader with a powerful statement that encapsulates your argument. Don’t try and say something profound about the text.

Statements like “Thus, the human condition is innately volatile” don’t mean anything unless they are anchored in the text. They might sound insightful, and perhaps are in a broad way, but they don’t contribute to your reader’s understanding of your insights into the text and/or module.

Instead, try to make a statement that conveys your understanding of the key idea in your text and, if applicable, connect it to the module you’re studying. In light of this, your final statement should instead be “Hence this texts illustrates how difficult circumstances can make human experience volatile.”

This second statement does something that the first does not, it adds context and logic. It creates a sustained argument by doing the thinking for the reader.

Your final statement wants to leave your reader thinking because they are intrigued, not because they are trying to piece together your point!

Now that we have a rough idea of what a conclusion should do, and how it should do it. Let’s have a go at putting one together.

How to write a conclusion – A step-by-step guide

What we will do now is go through the step-by-step process of writing a conclusion. We will continue to look at Macbeth , so that we have a clear text to study.   So to do this effectively, we need to quickly recap what the question was, and what our thesis and thematic framework were in response to it.

Revisiting the question

The question in the previous posts was:

“William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is not about revenge, it is a play concerned with morality and madness.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement? Make use of detailed references to the play in your response.

Revisiting our argument

To recap, our argument was that:

• Macbeth is about morality
• Macbeth goes mad with guilt
• His fear of revenge, a convention of the play’s genre, is what leads to his madness.

Revisiting our thesis

In the previous posts, our thesis statement was:

“The resolution of The Tragedy of Macbeth (1606) is driven by revenge. However, it is Shakespeare’s interrogation of the morality of Macbeth’s actions and his subsequent descent into madness that is the central focus of the text.”

Revisiting our thematic framework

And, similarly, our thematic framework introduced the following thematic points:

• “Macbeth’s madness is a response to his awareness of his immorality, it is driven by his fear of the revenge he feels he deserves.”
• “Macbeth’s actions are immoral, killing a king is regicide and the murder of his friends demonstrate his increasing depravity.”
• “As Macbeth’s madness emerges as he questions his morality and is plagued by visions and haunted by the spirits of his victims.”

Now we know what we’ve argued, let’s go through the step-by-step process for writing conclusions.

Step 1: Restate your thesis

The first step is reiterating our core argument. Our thesis was that,  “The resolution of The Tragedy of Macbeth (1606) is driven by revenge. However, it is Shakespeare’s interrogation of the morality of Macbeth’s actions and his subsequent descent into madness that is the central focus of the text.” We need to restate that in an effective way to summarise what we have just argued.

So, we need to restate that:

• Macbeth is Tragedy concerned with revenge and morality
• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are driven by lust for power
• They are stricken by guilt for the immoral way they gained power.

Matrix students learn how to paraphrase things concisely and directly. So let’s have a go at paraphrasing these 2 sentences into 1:

This sentence is assertive and makes a clear and strong statement about what has been argued in the essay. We have made it more concise than the introduction’s thesis. This gives us more room to discuss the logic of our thematic framework.

What we need to do now is restate our thematic framework.

Step 2: Reassert your thematic framework

To reassert our thematic framework we need to revisit the logic of our argument first. Our argument structure was:

• Macbeth is about morality;
• Macbeth goes mad with guilt; and,

And in our introduction we broke this down into three separate sentences to show you how to write a thematic framework:

For our conclusion we want to demonstrate concision and erudition, so we will paraphrase this in a shorter more direct way. To do this we will wrap these ideas into two sentences. Let’s see what that looks like:

Matrix students are taught to take this logical approach to writing conclusions. This statement reasserts the framework we presented in our introduction, but streamlines it and presents it in a chronological and logical order.

Now we need to make a statement that summarises our position on the question and conveys our central idea about the text.

Step 3: Make a final statement that summarises your argument

Your final statement is very important. It is the last engagement that you have with your reader. You need to demonstrate your knowledge of the text, your understanding of the questions, and an insight into the module being studied.

We were analysing at this text through the lens of Module B: Critical Study of Literature . As you remember, Module B look at well known texts to see why they are considered important and whether or not they have lasting value.

For our argument we will consider the text’s lasting value for audiences.

Our concluding statement, then, needs to reference this idea of a text’s lasting value and connect it to the themes in the text.  Macbeth is concerned with morality and guilt. So, we can argue that it is Macbeth ‘s depiction of morality and guilt that makes it relevant to modern audiences.

We also need to connect this to our restated thesis which was:

“Clearly, Shakespeare’s  Macbeth is a tragedy primarily focused on the consequences of guilt on those who discard their morality in the pursuit of power.”

Now, let’s have a look at the kind of concluding statement a Matrix student would be taught to write that connects all of these threads together:

The finished conclusion

To get a better sense of what we have argued, let’s have a look at how the finished conclusion looks:

Now that we have finished writing our conclusion, what next?

Next you need to practice writing your essays! Remember to proofread and edit your essay after you have finished writing it. Never submit the first draft!

© Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au, 2023. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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• Writing Tips

How to Write an Essay Conclusion

4-minute read

• 1st October 2022

Regardless of what you’re studying, writing essays is probably a significant part of your work as a student . Taking the time to understand how to write each section of an essay (i.e., introduction, body, and conclusion) can make the entire process easier and ensure that you’ll be successful.

Once you’ve put in the hard work of writing a coherent and compelling essay, it can be tempting to quickly throw together a conclusion without the same attention to detail. However, you won’t leave an impactful final impression on your readers without a strong conclusion.

We’ve compiled a few easy steps to help you write a great conclusion for your next essay . Watch our video, or check out our guide below to learn more!

1. Return to Your Thesis

Similar to how an introduction should capture your reader’s interest and present your argument, a conclusion should show why your argument matters and leave the reader with further curiosity about the topic.

To do this, you should begin by reminding the reader of your thesis statement. While you can use similar language and keywords when referring to your thesis, avoid copying it from the introduction and pasting it into your conclusion.

Try varying your vocabulary and sentence structure and presenting your thesis in a way that demonstrates how your argument has evolved throughout your essay.

2. Review Your Main Points

In addition to revisiting your thesis statement, you should review the main points you presented in your essay to support your argument.

However, a conclusion isn’t simply a summary of your essay . Rather, you should further examine your main points and demonstrate how each is connected.

Try to discuss these points concisely, in just a few sentences, in preparation for demonstrating how they fit in to the bigger picture of the topic.

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3. Show the Significance of Your Essay

Next, it’s time to think about the topic of your essay beyond the scope of your argument. It’s helpful to keep the question “so what?” in mind when you’re doing this. The goal is to demonstrate why your argument matters.

If you need some ideas about what to discuss to show the significance of your essay, consider the following:

• What do your findings contribute to the current understanding of the topic?
• Did your findings raise new questions that would benefit from future research?
• Can you offer practical suggestions for future research or make predictions about the future of the field/topic?
• Are there other contexts, topics, or a broader debate that your ideas can be applied to?

While writing your essay, it can be helpful to keep a list of ideas or insights that you develop about the implications of your work so that you can refer back to it when you write the conclusion.

Making these kinds of connections will leave a memorable impression on the reader and inspire their interest in the topic you’ve written about.

4. Avoid Some Common Mistakes

To ensure you’ve written a strong conclusion that doesn’t leave your reader confused or lacking confidence in your work, avoid:

• Presenting new evidence: Don’t introduce new information or a new argument, as it can distract from your main topic, confuse your reader, and suggest that your essay isn’t organized.
• Undermining your argument: Don’t use statements such as “I’m not an expert,” “I feel,” or “I think,” as lacking confidence in your work will weaken your argument.
• Using generic statements: Don’t use generic concluding statements such as “In summary,” “To sum up,” or “In conclusion,” which are redundant since the reader will be able to see that they’ve reached the end of your essay.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of forgetting to proofread your essay ! Mistakes can be difficult to catch in your own writing, but they can detract from your writing.

Our expert editors can ensure that your essay is clear, concise, and free of spelling and grammar errors. Find out more by submitting a free trial document today!

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How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay: 10 Examples of Conclusion Paragraphs

How to write a conclusion for an essay? When it comes to writing an essay, the conclusion is often overlooked as just a summary of the main points. However, a strong conclusion can leave a lasting impression on the reader and tie together all the ideas presented in the essay. In this article, we will explore different strategies for writing an effective conclusion and provide some examples to help you get started.

How To Write a Conclusion for an Essay

Understanding the Purpose of a Conclusion

A conclusion is an essential part of any essay, and it serves a crucial role in summarizing your arguments and providing closure to your readers. In this section, we will discuss the role and importance of a conclusion in an essay.

Role of a Conclusion

The primary role of a conclusion is to bring closure to your essay by summarizing your arguments and restating your thesis statement. It is the final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your readers and persuade them to take action or think differently about the topic.

Additionally, a conclusion can also provide a sense of completion to your essay by tying up any loose ends and addressing any counterarguments or opposing viewpoints. It should leave your readers with a clear understanding of your position and the significance of your arguments.

Importance of a Strong Conclusion

A strong conclusion can make a significant impact on the overall effectiveness of your essay. It can leave a lasting impression on your readers and persuade them to take action or think differently about the topic.

A weak or poorly written conclusion, on the other hand, can undermine the credibility of your arguments and leave your readers with a sense of confusion or dissatisfaction. It can also fail to provide closure to your essay and leave your readers with unanswered questions or unresolved issues.

To ensure that your conclusion is strong and effective, you should consider the following tips:

• Restate your thesis statement in a new and compelling way.
• Summarize your main arguments and provide a clear and concise summary of your essay.
• Address any counterarguments or opposing viewpoints and explain why your position is the most valid.
• Provide a call to action or suggest further research or exploration on the topic.

In conclusion, a conclusion is an essential part of any essay, and it serves a crucial role in summarizing your arguments and providing closure to your readers. A strong conclusion can leave a lasting impression on your readers and persuade them to take action or think differently about the topic. By following the tips provided in this section, you can ensure that your conclusion is strong and effective.

How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay

Restating the thesis.

One of the most important elements of your conclusion is restating your thesis. This means that you should rephrase your thesis statement in a way that reminds the reader of the main point of your essay. By doing so, you can help ensure that your reader leaves with a clear understanding of your argument.

Summarizing Main Points

In addition to restating your thesis, it can be helpful to summarize the main points of your essay. This can help tie together any loose ends and ensure that your reader understands the full scope of your argument. When summarizing your main points, be sure to be concise and avoid repeating information that you have already covered.

Closing Statement

Finally, you should include a closing statement in your conclusion. This should be a sentence or two that leaves a lasting impression on your reader. You may want to consider ending with a thought-provoking question, a call to action, or a memorable quote. Whatever you choose, make sure that it is relevant to your essay and leaves a lasting impression.

Writing Techniques for Effective Conclusions

Using a quote.

One way to add impact to your conclusion is to use a relevant quote. This can be a quote from a famous person, a line from a poem or song, or even a quote from one of the sources you’ve used in your essay. The key is to choose a quote that adds depth and meaning to your conclusion.

For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of education, you might conclude with a quote from Nelson Mandela : “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” This quote not only reinforces the importance of education but also adds a powerful emotional element to your conclusion.

Posing a Question

Another effective technique for writing a conclusion is to pose a thought-provoking question. This can be a rhetorical question or a question that requires further exploration. The goal is to leave your reader thinking about the topic long after they’ve finished reading your essay.

For example, if you’re writing an essay about climate change, you might conclude with a question like: “What kind of world do we want to leave for future generations?” This question encourages your reader to consider the long-term implications of climate change and can leave a lasting impact.

Making a Prediction

Finally, you can use your conclusion to make a prediction about the future. This can be a prediction about the topic you’ve been discussing or a prediction about the impact your essay will have on the reader. The goal is to leave your reader with a sense of hope or inspiration.

For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of volunteer work, you might conclude with a prediction like: “As more people become involved in volunteer work, we can look forward to a brighter, more compassionate future.” This prediction not only reinforces the importance of volunteer work but also leaves the reader feeling inspired to make a difference.

Conclusion Paragraph Examples

Example from a literary essay.

In a literary essay, your conclusion should tie together the various themes and motifs that you’ve explored throughout your essay. Here’s an example of a strong conclusion from a literary essay:

“Overall, the use of symbolism in ‘The Great Gatsby’ highlights the stark contrast between the facade of the American Dream and the harsh reality of life in the 1920s. Through the use of the green light, the valley of ashes, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, Fitzgerald demonstrates the emptiness and corruption that lies at the heart of the American Dream. By exposing the hollowness of this ideal, Fitzgerald challenges us to consider what truly gives our lives meaning.”

Example from a Research Paper

In a research paper, your conclusion should summarize your findings and explain the implications of your research. Here’s an example of a strong conclusion from a research paper:

“In conclusion, our study provides evidence that regular exercise can have a significant impact on reducing the risk of heart disease. Our findings suggest that individuals who engage in regular physical activity are more likely to maintain healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as reduce their risk of developing other chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. These findings have important implications for public health policy and highlight the need for increased efforts to promote physical activity.”

Example from an Argumentative Essay

In an argumentative essay, your conclusion should summarize your main argument and leave your reader with a clear understanding of your position. Here’s an example of a strong conclusion from an argumentative essay:

“Based on the evidence presented, it is clear that the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports is both unethical and dangerous. While some argue that these drugs are necessary to remain competitive in today’s sports landscape, the risks associated with their use far outweigh any potential benefits. It is up to us as a society to take a stand against this practice and demand that our athletes compete on a level playing field, free from the influence of performance-enhancing drugs.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some effective ways to end a conclusion?

One effective way to end a conclusion is to restate the thesis statement in a different way. You can also summarize the main points of your essay and leave the reader with a final thought or a call to action.

How can I write a strong conclusion for a research paper?

To write a strong conclusion for a research paper, you should briefly summarize the main points of the paper and restate the thesis statement. You can also suggest avenues for further research or provide a final thought that leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

What are some words or phrases that can be used to conclude an essay?

Some words and phrases that can be used to conclude an essay include “in conclusion,” “to sum up,” “therefore,” “thus,” “finally,” and “in summary.” However, it’s important to use these words and phrases appropriately and not overuse them.

Can you provide some examples of a conclusion paragraph for a project?

Sure, here’s an example of a conclusion paragraph for a project:

“In conclusion, this project has shown that renewable energy is a viable alternative to fossil fuels. By harnessing the power of wind, solar, and hydroelectricity, we can reduce our dependence on non-renewable resources and mitigate the effects of climate change. While there are still challenges to be overcome, such as cost and infrastructure, the potential benefits of renewable energy make it a promising option for the future.”

How do you write a conclusion for an argumentative essay?

To write a conclusion for an argumentative essay, you should summarize the main points of your argument and restate your thesis statement. You can also provide a final thought or call to action that encourages the reader to take a particular course of action or consider a different perspective.

What is the purpose of a conclusion paragraph in an essay?

The purpose of a conclusion paragraph in an essay is to provide a sense of closure and completeness to the reader. It should summarize the main points of the essay and restate the thesis statement in a different way. Additionally, it can leave the reader with a final thought or a call to action.

Last Updated on August 28, 2023

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How to write a captivating essay conclusion

(Last updated: 12 May 2021)

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We have helped 10,000s of undergraduate, Masters and PhD students to maximise their grades in essays, dissertations, model-exam answers, applications and other materials. If you would like a free chat about your project with one of our UK staff, then please just reach out on one of the methods below.

You may be surprised when we say that an essay conclusion is, in some ways, comparable to a piece of text as emotive as say, Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Sounds ridiculous? Perhaps. But, extravagant comparisons aside, what we mean here is that the core purpose of an essay conclusion can be compared to the end of any great speech, monologue or presentation that leaves you feeling something . Ultimately, when you conclude an essay, you want to engage the reader's emotions, whether they be excitement, surprise, contemplation, or a mix of these and more. And you want to do this in much the same way that Martin Luther King would have done with his captivated audience on that memorable day in 1963.

Conclusions are among the hardest parts of an essay to write well. You need to round off your essay effectively. You need to leave your reader with the best possible impression of your work. And, you need to somehow recap all your central points without simply repeating yourself. Sound like a tricky balancing act? We explain it all in more depth below – read on for our tips on how to conclude an essay effectively.

How do I conclude an essay?

What is a conclusion? It’s a question that seems, on the face of it, to have a perfectly simple answer. It’s the paragraph (or so) at the end of your essay where you bring your essay to a stop by recapping your central arguments, right? Easy.

If we asked you to list a few synonyms for an essay conclusion, we’re willing to bet you’d come up with a few words or phrases like “recap”, “summary”, “restatement of your thesis”, and so on. And it’s true you’re likely to find all of these somewhere in the conclusion of an essay.

"Words and phrases like 'recap', 'summary' and 'restatement of your thesis' don't accurately describe what an essay conclusion is. A conclusion is so much more, and a lot hinges on how well it is done."

But none of the phrases above fully grasp the function of an essay conclusion. In fact, taking any one of them to be entirely synonymous with an essay conclusion is likely to lead you down the path towards writing bad essay conclusions, or at least missed-opportunity conclusions – conclusions that don’t take full advantage of their place at the end of the essay to fulfil their rhetorical potential.

OK then, how do I avoid concluding an essay badly?

Before we get to answering the question of what an essay conclusion is, it’s useful to spend a moment thinking about some of the things an essay conclusion isn’t .

• It’s not a repeat of your introduction. Every university instructor has encountered an essay where a student has copied and pasted, almost word-for-word, their introduction at the bottom of their essay. It should be obvious that there’s no point in doing this. You're just eating up words by repeating the same information over again. And if a conclusion were simply a rehash of the introduction, there wouldn’t be any point in ending the essay with it. You could just end with your final body paragraph argument. Or, if you really wanted your reader to read the introduction again and remind themselves of your central arguments, you could simply say something like, “See introduction”! OK, so copying and pasting the introduction is an extreme example, and you’re probably thinking “there’s no way I’d do something like that.” But it’s fairly common for students to conclude an essay by simply rephrasing their introduction. Just paraphrasing yourself while retaining all the content of your introduction isn’t a whole lot different from the copy-paste job. You’re still just going through the motions and repeating the same information without really getting to grips with the dedicated function a conclusion is supposed to fulfil.
• It’s not just a summary of your body paragraphs. Another common trap students fall into is to view the essay conclusion simply as a recap. They conclude an essay by providing a concise summary of each of the arguments they’ve made. This kind of recap can form an important part of your conclusion, especially in longer essays where you’ve made a series of complex arguments. But, as with repeating your introduction, eating up valuable word count simply to rehash stuff you’ve already said is redundant and doesn’t fulfil any sort of rhetorical or persuasive function.
• It’s not a place to add new content or make new arguments. Yes, your essay conclusion shouldn’t be simply a recap, a summary, or a repeat of what you’ve already written in your essay. But it is a place where you reflect on the arguments you’ve made rather than starting to introduce anything new. And here’s where the whole business of how to conclude an essay starts to get a bit complicated. If a conclusion is neither simply a recap of old information nor a place for new information, what is it, exactly?

A conclusion is a sales pitch!

If you’ve been paying attention you may have seen that we’ve already mentioned “rhetoric” a couple of times so far in this post – and this is no accident. You can’t really talk about essay conclusions without talking about rhetoric. The conclusion to an essay is the most purely rhetorical part of the entire piece.

By “rhetorical”, we mean a conclusion’s (and indeed the entire essay’s) ability to convince or persuade the reader of certain outlooks or arguments. An essay conclusion needs to use rhetoric to emotionally connect with the reader in some way. And this is done through the use of certain language and the way the information is presented.

If alarm bells are starting to ring at the mention of rhetoric, quiet them. Rhetoric gets a bad name in public discourse. Phrases like “pure rhetoric” or “empty rhetoric” are often used to suggest that an utterance lacks substance or integrity, or is somehow dishonest or insincere. And those are the last things you want your reader to take away from reading your essay! But rhetoric is one of the oldest scholarly disciplines in the world. In Classical societies – and in fact right up to the beginning of the twentieth century – it was considered one of the most important disciplines throughout Western society. The fact that it’s acquired something of a bad name over the last hundred years or so doesn’t mean it’s not still the foundation of good writing.

More importantly, your rhetorical skills can make a huge difference to whether your reader actually buys your argument. Let’s say we have two writers. One is skilled in rhetoric; the other less so. Both could make an identical set of arguments with the same supporting evidence and elicit entirely different responses in their readers. It’s true that the excessive use of rhetorical flourishes can rub your reader up the wrong way. It could cause them to think your essay is more about style than substance. But the subtler cues – in the way you phrase, structure, and present your arguments – can unquestionably make the difference between winning over a sceptical audience and leaving them unmoved.

"How you phrase, structure, and present arguments in your essay conclusion can make the difference between winning over a sceptical audience and leaving them unmoved – which could easily make a difference to your overall grade."

So what does all this have to do with how you conclude an essay? This can all seem a bit abstract when we’re dealing with essay writing , so let’s try an analogy. Let’s imagine you’re delivering a sales pitch for a property company. That company is trying to sell waterfront properties in a desirable holiday location – the Caribbean, say. Your audience is a set of moderately well-off individuals who regularly take expensive holidays. But, they’re not sure they can afford to buy a second home in the Caribbean. Even if they can afford it, they’re unclear if it would be a good investment.

To convince the members of your audience that they want to buy one of your properties, you’re going to have to conduct quite a detailed pitch. It could easily take a couple of hours or more to list the features of the property, the merits of the location, and the financial arrangements that will allow buyers to fund their purchase. You’ll make many arguments throughout your pitch, not all of which will be equally exciting. Sure, you’ll tell your potential customers about the balcony that leads off the master bedroom, the distance to the beach, and the amenities of the town in which the properties are located.

But your customers will also want to know other details: can they let the property while they’re not using it, for example? What kind of returns will that bring, and will these be enough to offset the purchase price? How are properties taxed in the area? And how about the facilities the local authority will provide? What kind of sanitation and waste facilities does the property have? Is it connected to a sewer or does it use a septic tank?

If the buyer is going to sign on the dotted line when it’s all done, you’re going to have to provide convincing answers to all of these questions. But simply recapping your arguments in order isn’t going to end the presentation effectively. You don’t want the lingering thought in your audience’s mind to be taxes or sewage. And you certainly don’t want to hit them with any new detail in your closing few slides. In fact, you don’t really want them to leave the presentation with any of the details you’ve discussed uppermost in their mind. Dwelling on any of the details is likely to remind them that buying and owning property is time-consuming, expensive, and stressful.

The impression you want to leave them with is that of having their very own place in the sun. An island paradise that’s theirs to return to any time they want to. You don’t want them leaving the building still musing over any of the specific points of your sales pitch. They need to be moved by the overall effect – and the promise – of what you’ve offered them. Sun on their backs, sand between their toes, and a crystal-clear blue ocean stretching out ahead of them.

So how does this help me conclude an essay?

OK, we get it. You’re not selling anybody a beach getaway when you conclude an essay. But what the above analogy describes is rhetoric . In an essay, you are making a pitch. And the same principles as the property sales example above apply.

Your essay conclusion is your parting shot. It’s your opportunity to leave your reader with a favourable impression of the arguments you’ve just made. You want them, at minimum, to be convinced that you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve; that you’ve proved your points . Better yet, you want them to feel satisfied that you’ve taken them on an intellectual journey that was interesting and rewarding.

Best of all, though, is if you leave them with a feeling of excitement . Excitement that your essay promises a new way of thinking about a topic, or a promising line of intellectual inquiry. The scholarly equivalent of feeling sand between their toes, in other words.

My five-paragraph essay has to be exciting ? How do you propose I manage that?

It’s true that not all essays are equally rewarding to read. But academia is all about the collaborative generation of knowledge. And even first-year undergraduate students can offer an original take on a subject that causes their instructors to think about a topic in a new way. Maybe they’ll even incorporate that new angle into their class teachings, or the next paper they write. Don’t underestimate how exciting that can be for instructors. And don’t underestimate how much your instructor – with a pile of fifty or a hundred essays to sift through – will appreciate a well-written, animated essay that reads satisfyingly from start to finish. And if there’s even a germ of an original idea in the essay, it’s your job to sell it. It’s your job to highlight what’s new and innovative about your argument, and to excite your reader. That’s what a good essay conclusion does.

Here's a note if you’re writing an essay using a formulaic structure like the five-paragraph, three-argument essay. With these formulaic essays it’s even more important that you don’t simply regurgitate your introduction in your conclusion. The key to concluding an essay of any length or complexity is persuading your reader that there’s been development between the start and end of the essay. They must end knowing more than they did at the start. The same applies for five-paragraph essays.

Let’s consider an example where you’re writing a five-paragraph essay about Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 18, and you’ve been asked to examine some of the formal features of the sonnet. We’ll take a look at a sample introduction that concisely outlines the thesis of the essay, and then think about how we might conclude such an essay effectively. (Note: this example contains some fairly detailed literary-critical terminology, but you don’t need to understand this to be able to follow along.)

Introduction:

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) is one of his best-known sonnets and deals with themes of eternal love, ageing, and the nature of art. This essay explores how Shakespeare uses the formal structure of the sonnet, together with small but significant variations in the meter, and the conceit of the changing seasons, to explore these themes.

Body paragraphs:

[ Body paragraph 1: the structure of an English sonnet, the use of the “turn” at the start of the third quatrain, and the couplet at the end that presents a neat summary of the poem’s message about the timelessness of art in the face of human ageing.]

[ Body paragraph 2: the generally regular use of iambic pentameter in the sonnet, and the effects of strategic substitutions, in particular the replacement of the first iambic foot in line 3 with a spondaic foot, and its introduction of a note of restlessness and discord after the harmonious opening two lines.]

[ Body paragraph 3: the conceit of the changing seasons that runs through the entire poem, and the ways in which Shakespeare uses the sonnet structure to explore different aspects of this theme.]

Bad essay conclusion (rephrasing of the thesis statement, lacking any development):

Sonnet 18 explores the themes of love, ageing, and art through the extended metaphor of the changing seasons. Shakespeare uses the sonnet’s formal structure, variations in the iambic pentameter meter, and the conceit of summer changing into winter, to explore these eternal themes.

Better essay conclusion (recaps on central points and makes some attempt to draw them together):

In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare explores the themes of love, ageing, and art through the extended metaphor of the changing seasons. Shakespeare uses both the meter and structure of the sonnet to maximise the effectiveness of this metaphor. Metrical variations like the spondaic substitution at the start of the third line maximise the drama of this metaphor. By making use of the formal structure of the sonnet – especially the “turn” at the start of the third quatrain – Shakespeare is able to explore different facets of his central conceit of summer changing into winter.

Best essay conclusion (recaps central points but makes the key links between them explicit and gestures towards broader implications):

Shakespeare’s sonnets are among the most celebrated sequences of poems in the English language, and Sonnet 18 provides several important illustrations of why this is. The formal techniques Shakespeare uses to explore the poem’s central conceit of changing seasons are often very subtle, but demonstrate a mastery of the sonnet form that enhances his exploration of his central conceit of the changing seasons. We have seen, for example, how minor metrical variations have a powerful impact on the poem’s message, like the use of the spondaic foot “Rough winds” in place of an iambic foot at the start of the third line, which introduces a note of conflict into the seemingly harmonious simile with which he begins the sonnet. And the archetypal sonnet “turn” that Shakespeare deploys at the start of the third quatrain allows him to convey a profound message about the redemptive, eternal power of art, transforming a melancholy lament on the process of ageing into a triumphant celebration of the poem itself.

As you’ll see from these three examples, there are many different ways to conclude an essay and recap on its central points. Each of the above essay conclusions could apply to the same basic thesis statement and three body paragraphs, but they would have radically different effects on the overall way a reader interprets the value of these arguments.

Our first example simply restates the thesis without displaying any significant development. The points made in the three body paragraphs are simply presented in the conclusion as a list. This creates an overall effect of disjointedness (often a major problem for five-paragraph essays).

The second example demonstrates the bare minimum a reader should expect from a conclusion. It creates a sense of development through the essay by revisiting some of the detail of the body paragraphs and attempting to draw links between them.

However, the third example represents a much more convincing “sales pitch” for this kind of essay. It groups together the various body paragraph arguments into a single unifying theme. In this case, it’s the idea that Shakespeare’s greatness as a poet rests in his mastery of form and content, and his ability to weave the two subtly into a poem that first descents into a lament on the ravages of ageing and then abruptly turns into a celebration of art and poetry.

What makes this conclusion example really stand out from the other two is its sense of balance between recap and sales pitch. Although it doesn’t introduce any new content, it does gesture towards broader implications for the arguments presented in the essay. For example, it highlights Shakespeare’s greatness as a poet and a master of form. The effect on a mundane, humdrum five-paragraph essay is quite transformative. The essay conclusion takes the contents of a fairly bog-standard, elementary literary-critical argument and makes them seem exciting and relevant.

A conclusion can’t save a bad essay, of course. But if you conclude an essay with the right sales pitch you can make even fairly elementary arguments sparkle!

How (and how not) to conclude an essay – dos and don’ts

The examples above offer some good pointers to help you conclude an essay in the most persuasive possible way. Here’s a summary of what we’ve learned:

• Do sell it. If your introduction and body paragraphs are where you lay the solid groundwork for your essay, your conclusion is where you convince your reader that what they’ve read represented a fun, insightful, intellectual journey that was worth their time. Don’t be afraid of rhetoric when you’re looking to conclude an essay – make the biggest, boldest pitch you can for the value of what you’ve argued.
• Do pull it all together. When you conclude an essay, you’re not only trying to convince your reader of the merit of your individual points or body paragraphs. You’re also making the case that your essay represented a unified, coherent whole. If you include one new thing in your introduction, make it an explicit theme that unifies all of your points and convinces your reader that your essay is a single, flowing, logical unit.
• Do be speculative. The conclusion to an essay is the one place where you get to bend the rules just a little bit. Throughout the rest of your essay you need to be scrupulously careful not to make assertions you can’t back up. But it’s expected that your conclusion gestures broadly – and slightly speculatively – towards the implications of your argument. Don’t go nuts and claim your argument will change the world, of course. That’s wholly unsupportable and comes across as ludicrous and overblown – the “bad” kind of rhetoric. But you should be aiming to excite your reader. You can often do this by suggesting that there’s an urgent need to change approach to a problem or view it in a new way.
• Don’t just rehash your thesis. The absolute least effective way you can conclude an essay is to simply repeat what you’ve already said in your introduction. You’ll create a sense of stagnation which is the very opposite of the sense of progression and dynamism you’re trying to create. This is especially true if your essay is short.
• Don’t introduce whole new arguments. It’s true, your essay conclusion should revisit your arguments in a fresh way, whether that’s by underlying a unifying theme or gesturing towards the implications of what you’ve written. But you still need to conclude your essay by reflecting on arguments you’ve already made, not by introducing new ones.

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The guide to writing an essay for beginners.

Writing an essay may be intimidating, especially for beginners. The process becomes easier if you understand the fundamental structure and strategy. Essays effectively convey ideas, argue, and critique issues. This guide will help you write an essay from structure to final draft revision. Even beginners will find the procedure easy with clear instructions and examples. Anyone can learn to write a convincing essay with the appropriate instruction. Essays allow complicated ideas to be expressed clearly with structure. Mastering essay writing will help you in many sectors, whether you’re writing for school, college, or personal projects.

Understanding Essay Structure

Essays have a simple framework that organizes thoughts and ideas. This framework underpins your writing, making it clear and easy to understand. An introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion are standard in all essays. The beginning introduces your thesis and establishes the tone for the essay. Support your argument with evidence, analysis, and examples throughout the essay. Each body paragraph should address one thesis-related concept. The conclusion concludes your argument, summarizes your essential arguments, and supports your thesis. Writing a well-organized and successful essay starts with understanding this basic framework.

Introduction: Capturing Attention

The start is crucial to your essay. Your reader will notice it first, setting the tone for the rest. A good introduction does more than present the topic—it captivates the reader. You may start with a fun fact, a challenging question, or a pertinent quotation. This hook should include background information that contextualizes your issue and makes it worth researching. Your introduction should conclude with a concise thesis statement that states your essay’s central idea. Your thesis guides your readers through the paper.

Body Paragraphs: Building Your Argument

Your essay’s body develops your thesis and provides proof. Each paragraph’s topic or opening sentence should state its central theme. The rest of the paragraph should support the topic phrase using facts, quotations, or examples. After providing the facts, explain how they help your premise and enhance your case. A coherent narrative requires each paragraph to flow logically into the next. Paragraph transitions assist the reader in going from thought to idea. After reading the body, your reader should grasp your argument and how each piece of evidence fits together.

Conclusion: Wrapping Things Up

The conclusion of your essay is your last chance to strengthen your case and wow the reader. Restate your argument based on the evidence you’ve offered throughout the essay. Avoid word-for-wording your thesis. Instead, rewrite it to reflect your newfound understanding and ideas from writing the essay. You should also briefly outline your main points and explain how they support your thesis. Firm conclusions don’t merely regurgitate facts; they bring closure. You may close with a thought-provoking comment, a reflection on your argument’s more enormous ramifications, or an action request. Your conclusion should keep readers thinking about your essay long after they finish.

Using Services for Writing

If you can’t compose an essay or don’t have time, try employing a professional writing service. Using these services, you may hire qualified writers to write a high-quality essay that matches your needs. Before using a writing service, you should review the service you want to use. Some services may not be high-quality or timely. Read customer reviews to make the proper pick. For example, services like ScamFighter can share their experiences to help you make decisions. Read reviews to avoid unreliable services and locate a writing platform that matches your demands.

Revising and Editing Your Essay

The writing process must include revising and editing. Break from your initial draft and return to it with new eyes. When reworking, focus on essay structure and flow. Does every paragraph support your thesis? Is your argument clear and logical? After fixing these significant flaws, you may edit more closely. Check for repetitious or unneeded material and simplify sentences. Finalize your essay by checking grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Grammarly and Hemingway can help you find errors and enhance your writing.

Common Types of Essays

Each type of essay has its own purpose and style. Knowing the varieties of essays will help you write effectively. For instance, narrative essays convey stories. They make sharing a personal tale or experience innovative and intriguing. On the other hand, descriptive essays describe a person, location, or object in great detail. These pieces use sensory details and sophisticated language to create vivid descriptions. Expository essays clarify an idea or provide information. They demand clear, logical thinking and breaking down complicated ideas into simpler bits. Persuasion is the focus of argumentative writing. In an argumentative essay, you take a stand on a subject and give evidence to persuade the reader.

Essay writing might be difficult, but with the appropriate attitude and mindset, it’s easier. By knowing the essay format, outlining your thoughts, and reviewing your work, you may write a convincing essay. Professional services can help you write a good essay if you find it too difficult. Read reviews before picking a service to be sure you’re choosing wisely. This guide shows novices how to create an intriguing essay for academic, career, or personal improvement.

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IELTS Writing Task 2 Conclusion Examples: How to End Your Essay Effectively

• Restate the main idea
• Summarize key points
• Provide a final thought or call to action
• Maintain a formal tone
• Avoid introducing new information

Examples of Strong IELTS Writing Task 2 Conclusions

Let’s examine some examples of effective conclusions for different IELTS Writing Task 2 question types.

Example 1: Opinion Essay

Question: Some people believe that unpaid community service should be a compulsory part of high school programs. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Conclusion: In conclusion, while there are valid arguments for making unpaid community service mandatory in high schools, I believe that the potential drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Forcing students to participate may lead to resentment and a lack of genuine engagement. Instead, schools should focus on educating students about the value of volunteering and provide opportunities for those who are interested. By encouraging rather than mandating community service, we can foster a more authentic sense of social responsibility among young people.

Example 2: Advantages and Disadvantages Essay

Question: Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living in a multi-generational household.

Conclusion: In summary, living in a multi-generational household presents both significant benefits and challenges. While it offers financial advantages, emotional support, and cultural continuity, it can also lead to privacy issues, conflicts, and reduced independence. Ultimately, the success of such living arrangements depends on clear communication, mutual respect, and the ability to balance individual needs with family obligations. As society evolves, it is crucial to recognize and address both the positive and negative aspects of multi-generational living to ensure harmonious family dynamics.

Example 3: Problem and Solution Essay

Question: The number of people who are overweight is increasing. What do you think are the causes of this? What solutions can you suggest?

Conclusion: To conclude, the rising prevalence of obesity is a complex issue stemming from various factors, including poor dietary habits, sedentary lifestyles, and socioeconomic influences. Addressing this problem requires a multi-faceted approach. By implementing comprehensive education programs, promoting active lifestyles, and creating supportive environments for healthy choices, we can work towards reducing obesity rates. It is crucial for governments, communities, and individuals to collaborate in these efforts to ensure a healthier future for all.

Example 4: Discussion Essay

Question: Some people think that parents should teach children how to be good members of society. Others, however, believe that school is the place to learn this. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

Conclusion: In conclusion, while both parents and schools play vital roles in shaping children into responsible members of society, I believe that the primary responsibility lies with parents. The home environment provides the foundation for a child’s values and behavior, which is then reinforced and expanded upon in school settings. Ideally, a collaborative approach between parents and educational institutions would be most effective, ensuring that children receive consistent guidance and support in developing the skills and values necessary to contribute positively to society. By recognizing the complementary roles of both parties, we can create a more comprehensive and impactful approach to raising socially conscious individuals.

Tips for Writing Effective Conclusions

• Keep it concise: Your conclusion should be about 40-50 words or 2-3 sentences.
• Use transition phrases: Start with phrases like “In conclusion,” “To sum up,” or “Overall” to signal the end of your essay.
• Echo your introduction: Refer back to your thesis statement and main points, but use different wording.
• Avoid repetition: Don’t simply copy and paste from your introduction or body paragraphs.
• End with impact: Leave the reader with a final thought that resonates.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in IELTS Writing Task 2 Conclusions

• Introducing new information: The conclusion is not the place for new ideas or arguments.
• Being too repetitive: While you should restate your main points, avoid simply repeating sentences from earlier in your essay.
• Using informal language: Maintain a formal tone throughout, including in your conclusion.
• Writing a lengthy conclusion: Keep it concise and to the point.
• Failing to answer the question: Ensure your conclusion directly addresses the essay prompt.

By avoiding these mistakes and implementing the tips and examples provided, you can craft strong, effective conclusions for your IELTS Writing Task 2 essays. Remember, practice is key to perfecting your conclusion-writing skills. Try writing conclusions for various essay types and seek feedback to continually improve your performance.

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As you prepare for your IELTS exam, focus on developing a clear, concise, and impactful concluding paragraph for each practice essay. With time and effort, you’ll find that crafting strong conclusions becomes second nature, helping you to leave a lasting impression on the examiner and boost your overall Writing Task 2 score.

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How to Answer IELTS Speaking Part 2 Cue Cards: A Comprehensive Guide

Writing Identity and Rhetorical Style Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

A writing identity is a self-awareness and a sense of direction that a writer cultivates through literary discipline. It incorporates their distinctive voice, manner, and outlook and impacts the information they produce. Moreover, Inouye and McAlpine (2019) state that identity writing has shifted from an abilities-based approach prioritizing the development of particular syntactic and linguistic abilities to a view of academic expression. Learners develop a scholarly identity reflecting the study impact they desire to make and the techniques and theoretical perspectives they connect through this procedure.

Relationship between Tone, Voice, Audience, and Performance

The tone is the mood suggested by the writer’s wording and word selection and the text’s effect on the person reading it. Therefore, it is clear that the emotional range of a piece’s tone can span the spectrum. It can be severe, amusing, sarcastic, or whatever else is intended by the author. For instance, a writer conveying their difficulties with psychological disorders may employ a gloomy tone to underscore the gravity of the subject.

Voice is how a writer expresses their personality on paper by the selection of words, the structure of sentences, tone, and phrasing. In addition, voice is essential because it tells a true narrative from an individual’s perspective. It is prevalent in identity literature to establish a close and personal relationship with the reader through first-person narration. The audience is important in identity writing because it affects the tone and voice employed. The author must consider the audience when selecting a voice and style. Population trends, cultural heritage, and audience preferences influence how writers communicate their message.

Importance of Identity in Writing

Identity in writing is important because it enables individuals to express what they have experienced. Writing regarding their identities may assist people in communicating with people who have gone through comparable events and offer an understanding of viewpoints that vary from one’s own. This can cultivate sensitivity and comprehension, crucial aspects of a compassionate culture. In addition, (Graham, 2019) insinuates that writing regarding identity might enable people to regulate what they say and dispute dominant ideologies that might not accurately convey their experiences. Students who carefully read, address, and react to these abstract ideas of academic writing greatly enhance their capacity and readiness to apply their comprehension of educational writing. Additionally, they can internalize intellectual traits, particularly when they concurrently incorporate their identities into these vague principles of instructional writing. Writing about a person’s identity may serve as a means of introspection and discovering themselves.

Perceiving Oneself

I am a well-informed, religiously diverse individual who supports various political philosophies. I believe that the universe is brimming with opportunities to be discovered. In addition, I think of fairness, honesty, and accountability because everyone is responsible for their actions. Additionally, individuals should exhibit compassion and empathy for one another. Despite these, I have several weaknesses, including poor communication skills, an obsession with perfection, and a tendency to be excessively critical of myself.

I perceive myself to be a well-mannered individual with a strong personality. Due to my success in past competitions, I view myself as a person with a high sense of self-worth and the potential for a prosperous future. In addition, I believe that the opinions of others cannot influence me. Due to these characteristics, I must exhibit self-efficacy and a positive personality. Regardless of how I perceive myself, others have opinions of who I am. Consequently, people view me as a successful person and an articulate speaker.

Reasons for Perception of Others

People view me as a successful individual due to my frequent participation in all conferences that educate individuals on how to improve their future life concerning their current situation. In addition, they view me as a helpful individual due to my participation in community service and charitable work. Furthermore, they view me as articulate and knowledgeable due to my success with motivational speeches and educational advancement.

Perception of People the Way They Do

In general, appearance, conduct, communication style, and circumstance affect people’s views of others. Biases, preconceptions, and prior experiences may also lead to generalizations about others. People’s first impressions of others are heavily influenced by how they look. According to studies, individuals quickly form opinions about others based on superficial details like appearance (Wahyuni et al., 2021). Cultural norms, expectations, and one’s preferences and prejudices may all play a role in such evaluations. People may attribute aggressive or dominating traits to those who talk loudly and aggressively, whereas those who speak quietly and cautiously may be seen as subservient or unsure.

My Writing Identities

My writing identity is a robust and open person who has endured hard times while growing up in a tough city neighborhood with a lot of poverty and little access to good education. Despite these problems, I have learned how to work well with others and how important it is to connect with people from different cultures. My friendly personality has also helped me do well in my work, as I am an excellent copywriter and expert writer (Thonus, 2020). I am good at showing detailed information clearly and shortly, which helps people and groups get their thoughts and plans across. I am good at writing but also interested in acting and love to play and watch sports.

Producing of Knowledge, Perform that way to Manipulate

To successfully influence ideas and themes with my audience, I need to know who they are, what they are interested in, and what drives them. I primarily study and analyze to learn more about my target group and their tastes. Further, my message should be clear, short, and essential to the public (Steensen et al., 2020). It should express ideas and themes clearly and make people feel something. Equally, storytelling is a powerful way to manipulate thoughts and articles with an audience. Use stories, tales, and examples to keep the audience’s attention and make the message more remembered. Using imagery can be crucial since visuals and other forms of media can improve my message and make it more interesting. Use pictures, movies, and other forms of media to back your ideas and themes.

Writing Identity Impacts on Rhetorical Style

How someone writes about who they are can significantly affect how they argue. Using words to convey our ideas and thoughts is called our rhetorical style. It has parts like tone, language, organization, and choice of words. Writing identity includes our past, experiences, attitude, and hobbies, which can affect how we approach writing and our stylistic tactics. For instance, I am aware of social justice and injustice issues. I can use my work to speak up for underrepresented groups or highlight critical social problems. What I’m interested in can also affect how I talk. I told you that I like to play and watch football and that acting is your love. If I were to write about these things, I might use strong words and powerful images to show how exciting and energetic they are. I might also use personal stories and experiences in my work to make it more exciting and accessible.

Making Writing Persuasive

One must first know their readership to write effectively for persuasion purposes. Do some research into who you’re writing for so you can address their specific pain points and questions. Second, support your claims with solid proof; convincing writing relies on evidence. You should include explanations like statistics and experts’ thoughts to strengthen your case. Third, appeal to the audience’s emotions rather than rationality (Graham et al., 2019). Create an impact with your audience by appealing to their feelings and motivating them to act using descriptive language and striking images. Add depth and impact to your writing using rhetorical techniques such as metaphors, similes, and rhetorical questions.

The fifth step is to deal with any objections to your assertions. This will demonstrate that you are open-minded and add weight to your case. Conclude with a compelling call to action that clarifies what the reader should do next. Make it straightforward, concise, and doable. Edit and rewrite your work until it is crystal clear, logically consistent, and persuasive. Check for coherence and clarity of expression to ensure your argument makes sense.

Writing identities is a continuous and diverse process that influences how people perceive themselves and their societal position. It requires navigating numerous cultural, social, and personal factors which impact a person’s belief in self and social belonging. The process of documenting identities is essential for personal development and self-discovery. It also enables individuals to establish relationships with those with comparable experiences and perspectives. Consequently, it is crucial to acknowledge the significance of written identities and establish spaces allowing people to investigate and convey their distinctive identities through writing. In this way, people can cultivate a society that honors and values individual differences and is more inclusive and diverse.

Graham, S. (2019). Changing how writing is taught . Review of Research in Education , 43 (1), 277–303. Web.

Graham, S., Harris, K. R., Fishman, E., Houston, J., Wijekumar, K., Lei, P. W., & Ray, A. B. (2019). Writing skills, knowledge, motivation, and strategic behavior predict students’ persuasive writing performance in the context of robust writing instruction . The Elementary School Journal , 119 (3), 487-510. Web.

Inouye, K., & McAlpine, L. (2019). Developing academic identity: A review of the literature on doctoral writing and feedback . International Journal of Doctoral Studies , 14 , 1. Web.

Steensen, S., Ferrer-Conill, R., & Peters, C. (2020). (Against a) theory of audience engagement with news . Journalism Studies , 21 (12), 1662-1680. Web.

Thonus, T. (2020). The disciplinary identity of second language writing . Journal of Second Language Writing , 49 , 100725. Web.

Wahyuni, A., Utami, A. R., & Education, E. (2021). The use of Youtube video in encouraging speaking skill. 7 (3), 1-9. Web.

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IELTS Charlie

Your Guide to IELTS Band 7

IELTS Writing Task 2: Sample Essays

On this page, you can find links to IELTS Writing Task 2 essays which I have written. These essays are examples of high scoring essays . Most of the essays include an essay plan , a vocabulary list and some practice exercises to help you improve your writing and language skills. Click on the links below to choose your IELTS Writing essay.

IELTS Writing Task 2: Essential Information

In IELTS Writing Task 2 , you write an  essay in response to a question about a topic, such as the environment, health or education. Your task is to present and support your views on the topic. You should explain your ideas using a logical structure, using language that makes your ideas clear to the reader. In short, IELTS Writing is a test of 2 things:

• your academic writing skills
• your English language skills

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essays

Scroll through my library of IELTS Writing Task 2 model essays. Just click on the essay you want to read my essay. I hope you find it useful!

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Shorter Working Week

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Problems and Solutions with Plastic

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Overseas Food

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Buying Food From All Over the World

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Competition v Cooperation

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Plastic

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Lack of Sleep

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Driverless Vehicles

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Travel

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Traffic Congestion and Pollution

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Technology and Relationships

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Young People’s Cultural Interests

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Hunger

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Car Tax – Advantages Disadvantages Essay

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Essay: Tourists In Extreme Conditions

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, tips for uc essays.

Yo, I'm struggling a bit with my personal statements for the UC applications. Would anyone be able to share successful examples or tips? I could use all the help I can get.

Absolutely, happy to share a few general tips and pointers! Don't worry, many students find writing these essays challenging, but with some guidance, you'll be fine.

1. Answer the question directly : Each UC personal insight question is asking for something specific. Make sure to get straight to the point and highlight what the prompt is asking for. For instance, if it’s asking about an academic subject, don’t spend too much time discussing your interest in the arts, but focus on a subject you're motivated by academically.

2. Show, don't tell : An effective essay should vividly depict the situation or event being discussed, not simply state it. Think about your senses while writing and try to incorporate how you felt, what you saw, or what you heard in the moment.

3. Focus on insight : The UCs are particularly interested in the insights and understandings you've gained from your experiences. What did you learn from them? How did they shape you? Make sure to answer these questions in your essays.

4. Express your voice : These essays are a chance for admissions officers to get to know you. Avoid using excessively formal language and let your personality shine through your writing. However, maintain a level of maturity and professionalism.

5. Break down larger themes : Sometimes, students struggle with these essays because they're trying to tackle a super broad or complex topic in just 350 words. It's often more effective to focus on a specific incident, moment, or realization that ties back to the broader theme.

Let's take a look at an example: Say, for UC Prompt #2 ("Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways..."), don't write an essay about all your artistic endeavors since childhood. Instead, focus on a single formative experience – maybe it's the time you designed a campaign poster for a friend running for office and the challenges you faced in conveying her message visually!

Though I can't provide a real UC essay example, I hope these suggestions help you with writing your UC personal statements. Remember to stay genuine, focus on self-reflection, and depict your growth and personal experiences. You're telling your own individual story – nobody else can write it for you. Good luck with your essays!

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AI for Essays

11 Best AI For Writing Essays

Explore the 11 best AI for writing essays that enhance creativity and simplify the writing process. Get started today!

Sep 23, 2024

Do you need help with essays? You're not alone. Many of us face writer's block, tight deadlines, or don’t know where to start. Luckily, with the best AI for writing essays, you can tackle these challenges head-on. This guide will guide you through the top AI tools that can help you draft, research, and polish your essays effortlessly, making the writing process smoother and more efficient. Otio's AI research and writing partner is here to assist you. This tool can simplify how you write and research using AI, making your academic life much easier.

Table Of Contents

What is essay writing, how to write good essays in 6 simple steps, is ai good for writing essays, benefits of using ai for writing essays, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

An essay is a piece of writing that expresses the writer's viewpoint or tells a story. It's often seen as similar to a story, paper, or article. Essays can be formal or informal. Formal essays are more academic and cover serious topics. The type of essay depends on what the writer wants to share with the reader. There are four main types of essays, each with its purpose and style.

Narrative Essays: Tell a Story

Narrative essays are about telling a story or describing an incident. They're usually written in the first person. The goal is to make the reader feel like they're experiencing the story firsthand. To achieve this, use vivid details and follow the principle of "show, don’t tell." Engage the reader and make the story come alive.

Descriptive Essays: Paint a Picture with Words

Descriptive essays focus on describing a place, object, event, or memory. The aim is to create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind, not just list details. Use sensory language to engage all the senses, not just sight. A well-written descriptive essay makes the reader feel the emotions the writer experienced at the time.

Expository Essays: Present the Facts

Expository essays involve presenting a balanced study of a topic. Writers must thoroughly know the subject, as these essays are based on facts, not personal feelings. Sub-types include contrast essays and cause-and-effect essays . There’s no room for the writer’s emotions here, just facts, statistics, and examples.

Persuasive Essays: Convince the Reader

Persuasive essays aim to persuade the reader to agree with the writer’s point of view. They’re about presenting facts and convincing the reader of the writer’s argument. Both sides of the debate need to be given, but the goal is to show that the writer’s side is more substantial.

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1. Break Down the Essay Question

Every essay starts with the prompt. The first step is to dissect it. Make sure you’re crystal clear on what’s being asked. Typically, essay questions have three key parts:

Content terms

These are the main ideas or concepts in the question.

Limiting terms

These define the boundaries of the topic.

Directive terms

These words tell you what action to take, like “analyze” or “compare.”

2. Craft Your Argument

Before writing, decide on your stance. Your argument is your central idea or thesis. For example:

Light in Gothic cathedrals symbolized its spiritual importance.

In Cologne’s Gothic cathedral, light highlighted the priest’s authority.

A clear argument unites your essay and guides the reader.

3. Back It Up with Evidence and Analysis

To win over your reader, use strong evidence and reasoning. This includes:

Use examples, facts, quotes, and statistics to support your claims.

Explain how your evidence backs up your argument.

Scholarship

Connect your ideas to existing research or theories.

4. Structure Your Essay

Essays need a clear structure : introduction, body, and conclusion.

Introduction

Introduce your topic and argument.

Develop your argument with evidence and analysis.

Summarize your key points and restate your argument.

5. Edit for Clarity

A well-argued essay can fall flat if it’s not written. Revise your work to improve flow and coherence. Ask yourself:

Is your argument clear?

Does your essay follow a logical structure?

Are your transitions smooth?

Does each paragraph focus on a single idea?

Are your sentences clear and free of errors?

6. Cite Your Sources

Don’t forget to credit your sources . Follow the required citation style and ensure accuracy. This gives credit to the original authors and strengthens your argument by showing your work is grounded in research.

In today’s world, managing information overload is a real challenge. Otio is here to help . As your AI research and writing partner , it streamlines the process from information gathering to essay drafting. Try Otio for free today !

Unlocking Writer's Block

AI can be a game-changer when it comes to writing essays. Consider staring at a blank page, knowing what you want to say but struggling to start. An AI essay generator helps you move past this hurdle. It offers initial drafts that can spark ideas. Skim through these drafts, and you'll find phrases or concepts that resonate. 

These can serve as stepping stones to build your work. Suddenly, that daunting essay feels more manageable. AI offers a way to break the cycle of staring at a cursor without writing a word.

Exploring Topic Ideas

Choosing a topic is often the most challenging part of writing an essay. With AI, you can explore various angles before settling on one. Run a few different prompts through the generator to see what comes out. You may discover an approach that you hadn’t considered. Let’s say your paper is on climate change. 

An AI tool might offer insights into specific subtopics, like economic impacts or technological solutions . This process can clarify what excites you most about the subject, leading to a more passionate and focused essay.

Articulating Complex Thoughts

Sometimes, you know what you want to say but can’t figure out how. This is where AI shines. It acts like a silent writing partner. You type in your jumbled thoughts, and the AI organizes them into coherent sentences. 

The result is similar to discussing ideas with someone else without pressure. It’s a private brainstorming session where you can express yourself in raw form, knowing the AI will help polish your thoughts into something more presentable.

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1. Otio: Revolutionizing Research and Writing

Otio is an AI-powered workspace designed to streamline the research process for students and professionals overwhelmed by information. It aggregates data from countless sources, generates detailed AI notes, and assists in drafting written pieces. It’s a game-changer for crafting essays and research papers efficiently.

2. Jasper: Your Reliable Writing Companion

Jasper is a supportive companion for essay writing. It offers an easily navigable interface brimming with features that simplify writing tasks. Jasper impresses with its ability to mimic a human-like tone, ensuring your essays don’t sound robotic.

User-friendly interface  

Human-like writing style  

Extensive selection of templates  

Excellent customer support  

On the pricier side  

May need guidance for precision  

It can require multiple attempts for optimal results  

3. Editpad: The Free Solution for Quick Edits

Editpad is a top choice for budget-conscious writers. It offers a straightforward interface and essential editing tools , such as grammar checks and style suggestions, making it easy to refine essays swiftly.

Pros  

Rapid text generation  

Effective plagiarism detection  

Cons  

Limited customization options  

AI-detected output may need refinement  

4. Rytr: Affordable, Efficient Writing

Rytr is an all-encompassing AI platform that assists in crafting high-quality essays quickly and cost-effectively. It generates content based on user inputs, allowing for continued refinement until you’re satisfied with the result.

Intuitive interface  

Cost-effective pricing  

Free version for trial  

Robust plagiarism checker  

May struggle with repetitiveness in longer texts  

5. Textero.AI: Tailored Academic Assistance

Textero.ai is a top choice for academic writing, offering features like an essay writer, outline generator, and research assistant. It provides valuable customization options and ensures plagiarism-free content .

Access to a vast research database  

High personalization of content  

Plagiarism-free outputs  

Personal library for user uploads  

It takes time to generate complete essays  

The free version has daily word limits  

6. Copy.AI: Versatile Content Creation

Copy.ai excels in creating diverse content, from marketing copy to academic essays. Its collaborative features make it ideal for team projects, though its focus leans more toward marketing.

A broad range of copywriting tools  

Collaborative capabilities  

Suitable for both marketing and academic tasks  

Overwhelming for beginners  

The free plan is limited  

7. EssayBuilder.AI: Quick Essay Generation

Essay-Builder.AI enables fast essay creation through an intuitive process. It offers a variety of essay types and customization options, making it a favorite for students needing quick results.

Extensive essay-type selection  

May lack depth in academic research  

The free version lacks citation features  

8. WriteSonic: A Comprehensive Writing Toolkit

Writesonic offers a range of writing tools, from paraphrasing to essay generation. It’s an excellent choice for those seeking a multipurpose platform, though some features may vary in quality.

A wide array of features  

Affordable pricing  

Easy-to-use interface  

Varying output quality  

Not specialized for essays  

9. HiveMind: Project Management with a Twist

HiveMind is designed for project management, but its AI tools can assist in content generation. It’s part of Hive’s larger ecosystem, offering a comprehensive suite for team collaboration.

Integrated project management tools  

AI-generated content for marketing  

Part of a larger tool ecosystem  

Not primarily focused on writing  

Outputs detectable by AI checkers  

10. Claude: New Horizons in AI Writing

Claude is emerging as a strong contender in the AI writing space, delivering high-quality creative content. While it’s still in development, its potential for essay writing is promising.

High-quality content generation  

Promising future developments  

Limited features in the beta  

Pricing is subject to change  

11. CollegeEssay.org: Tailored for Students

CollegeEssay.org is crafted specifically for students, ensuring content aligns with academic standards. It offers various tools to simplify the essay-writing process while maintaining integrity.

Advanced plagiarism detection  

Rapid essay generation  

Customizable writing options  

Limited analytical capabilities  

Requires editing for style adaptability  

Boost Your Productivity with AI

AI writing tools, like GPT-4, act like a supercharged assistant. They craft and refine your essays at high speed. This means you can focus more on research and critical thinking while AI handles the heavy lifting. Consider having more time for what matters.

Boost the Quality of Your Essays

These tools also enhance the quality of your essays. AI can catch grammar errors, improve sentence flow, and ensure your content captivates readers. Your writing becomes more polished with instant feedback from AI-based grammar checks and style editors. Plus, you’ll learn a thing or two along the way.

Make Writing More Accessible

AI levels the playing field for essay writing . Whether English isn’t your first language or you face learning obstacles, AI can help. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools make writing more accessible. They can also offer personalized guidance tailored to your style and needs, easing the stress of the writing process.

Knowledge workers, researchers, and students are drowning in content. The constant influx of information from articles, videos, tweets, and more can be overwhelming. Fragmented tools don't make it easier. You find yourself juggling multiple platforms just to keep up. Otio changes that. Think of it as your all-in-one AI workspace . It lets you collect data from all sorts of sources—bookmarks, YouTube videos, lengthy PDFs—and organizes them in one place. This approach reduces the chaos, making it easier to focus on what matters.

Fast-Track Your Research with AI-Generated Notes

Consider this: you’ve bookmarked a dozen articles, a couple of YouTube videos, and a PDF or two. Instead of slogging through each one manually, Otio provides AI-generated notes for all of them. It extracts the key takeaways, allowing you to grasp the material quickly. Want to know more about a specific point? You can chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases just like you would with ChatGPT. This feature is a game-changer for anyone who needs to synthesize information fast.

From Reading List to First Draft with Ease

Have you ever wished you could go from having a reading list to a first draft in a day? Otio helps you do just that. Once you've collected information and extracted the key points, you can start drafting. Otio uses AI to assist in writing, guiding you through the process so you’re never staring at a blank page for long. This makes writing research papers or essays faster and less stressful.

Transform Your Research Workflow

With Otio, you’re not just collecting and taking notes. You’re transforming the way you work. It’s a dynamic, AI-native workspace that understands the needs of researchers. Whether you're a student writing an essay or a knowledge worker compiling a report, Otio makes the process smoother . It’s more than a tool; it’s a partner in your research journey.

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other ways to say "in conclusion" in formal and casual writing

Considering the level of formality when writing is crucial – it shapes the tone and style of your communication. The phrase "in conclusion" is commonly used to signal the end of a discussion or argument, but several other ways indicate the same. Which other ways to say "in conclusion" will make it more engaging and add meaning to your writing for readers?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. in summary, 2. as has been demonstrated, .3. overall, it can be said, 4. logically, 5. long story short, 7. the above points illustrate, 8. undoubtedly, 9. in closing, 10. use a question, 11. to summer up, 12. in the final analysis, 13. last but not least, 14. on a final note, 15. in a nutshell, wrapping up.

Writing your introduction formally or casually can be an exciting and important part of the article. But also crafting a well-rounded conclusion is essential to the impact of your writing. It's the final opportunity to emphasise the main points and create a lasting impression.

But sometimes, overusing the phrase "in conclusion" can be monotonous. That's why exploring other phrases for "in conclusion" that are suitable to use while concluding your writing will help you not sound too repetitive.

Other ways to say "in conclusion"

Whether you're writing a formal essay or a casual blog post, knowing different ways to wrap up your thoughts can greatly improve the impact of your conclusion. Choosing a benefiting phrase from a list of other ways to say "in conclusion" will have a positive effect on your reàder.

Check out how to write an application letter for attachment in a hospital

The phrase gives the reader a clear heads-up that the writer's article is on the final point. It informs that the writer will restate the main points of the written material and draw a conclusion from those points. So, why not differentiate from the others using a summary instead of a conclusion phrase? It still sounds unique, but in the best way.

'As has been demonstrated' is a simple way of concluding all your points and running down everything you have to confidently state that those points have convincingly proven your case. The phrase is the best when you want to sound formal in official writing .

To capture an idea at the end of critical or descriptive writing, use the phrase 'Overall, it can be said' at the beginning of the last paragraph. The phrase brings out the writer's essence, where they engage their audience by saying what they feel about the article's topic. It is a general phrase that captures your thoughts.

Sample application letter for a supermarket job in Kenya with writing tips

The phrase logically is usually used at the beginning of any paragraph that states a series of facts backed by clear steps to follow that will lead the reader to the end of the writing. It's a great way to conclude your writing in a balanced and comprehensive manner.

"Long story short" is one of the synonyms for "in conclusion" in an essay, but it's more casual. It's best used in writing that has a conversational or informal tone. When you use the phrase, you will summarise what you've been talking about briefly and straightforwardly. It's a quick and easy way to wrap up your thoughts, especially when you want to avoid going into too much detail.

So, if you're writing something that's meant to be read in a relaxed way, like a blog post or a personal story, "long story short" could be a good fit.

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"Lastly" is often used in argumentative or informative writings. When you're about to share the final point or idea, the best way is to start with "Lastly" to signal that you're wrapping up your argument or discussion. It's usually seen in the first or last sentence of the concluding part of an essay.

When writing something formal and you're about to share your final thoughts or observations, using "the phrase can be effective.

The phrase best introduces a conclusion, particularly when discussing the impact of the points made in your essay. It's a good way to transition from the body of your essay to your final thoughts, and it smoothly leads to a statement that supports your main argument or thesis.

After using "The above points illustrate", conclude your key points and show how they back up your main argument. The phrase makes your conclusion strong and reinforces the points you've made throughout your writing.

How to write a retirement letter: Step-by-step guide with samples

The phrase is particularly useful when emphasising the certainty or obviousness of your argument or point. Starting your concluding remarks with "Undoubtedly" signals that you're wrapping up your thoughts and gives assurance about your statements.

Therefore, "Undoubtedly" is a strong and assertive way to conclude your writing, leaving your readers with a clear impression of your viewpoint.

A classy alternative to in conclusion, in writing, is "in closing". It is a somewhat formal expression without being flowery. This transition phrase is especially useful for the last sentence of a conclusion. It is a good signal that you are nearly at the bitter end of your essay or speech.

A particularly common way to use in closing is to signal in an argumentative piece that you are about to give your call to action.

The use of questions is among the many ways of how to say "in conclusion" differently. When writing your essay, choosing to end with a leading or an open-ended question brings out your creative side. It will leave your readers thinking about the argument you have made as well as engage them in the discussion.

Executive assistant cover letter writing tips and examples

Are you wondering how to say "in conclusion" without saying "in conclusion"? The phrase "to summer up" is one of the best phrases to replace the use of "in conclusion". It is used to indicate that you are summarising your main points. It works well with formal writing, though sometimes it is used in informal writing.

The phrase prepares your reader that the writing is coming to an end. Following this phrase, you concisely reiterate your main points, reinforcing their importance and reminding your readers of the key takeaways from your piece.

The phrase is a great expression in your conclusion since it's a less clichéd and more refined way to begin a conclusion. Once you start drawing things to a close, using it, in the final analysis, allows you to tail nicely into your last summation.

How to write a character letter to a judge for a friend

"Last but not least" is another phrase that can be used as an alternative to "in conclusion." It's a way to introduce your discussion's final point or topic, implying that while it may be the last point, it's just as important as the others. This phrase is often used to wrap up lists or series of points.

When you use "the phrase, it adds a sense of completeness to your discussion and emphasises the significance of the final point, ensuring it doesn't get overlooked because it's mentioned last.

Can you use a final note to close your writing? Before you wrap up your final thoughts, you want to leave your readers with one last alternative in the conclusion. Using this expression; you get the chance to express your thoughts by letting your reader get prepared for the final point. This phrase is a standalone to be used in both writing and speeches.

Alternatives to "I hope this email finds you well" in formal communication

The expression is used to indicate that you are about to give a short summary. It's appropriate to use in a nutshell both in writing and in speeches, but it should be avoided in contexts where you're expected to use a serious, formal register. In a nutshell, the expression can also signal you've reached the end of a story or argument you were writing about.

The above are other ways to say "in conclusion" in formal and casual writing. Regardless of how you conclude your writing, the most important part of the conclusion is leaving a lasting impression on your readers. And why not try new options such as the above that will inspire you to conclude your writing in a new style?

Tuko.co.ke shared an article about Thank You email subject lines for mails after interviews. After the interview, you ought to express your gratitude to the interviewer with an email following up. The email subject line is the only section of your message that the interviewer will see when they check their inbox, so it is important that you pay close attention to it while you are writing.

Captivating thank you email subject lines for emails that increase the likelihood that the recruiting professional will open and read your email following the interview. An effective way to make a good impression and differentiate yourself from other applicants is to send a thank-you email following the interview.

Source: TUKO.co.ke

Gladys Mokeira Obiero (Lifestyle writer) Gladys is a content creator who has worked with Tuko since 2018, where she won the Best Writer Award in 2022. She previously held other positions, including an editing role at Kami.com.ph, Yen.com.gh, and Legit.ng. She graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor’s Degree in Project Planning and Management. In 2023, Gladys finished the AFP course on Digital Investigation Techniques. Email: [email protected]