Objectives:

• To discuss how to write an effective conclusion
• To discuss the importance of an conclusion
• To discuss what to do and what not to do when writing your conclusion

In our previous lesson, we discussed the introduction. Now we’re going to be talking about the conclusion—what it aims to achieve and what goes into writing a good conclusion. We’re also going to be discussing a couple of dos and don’ts when it comes to writing conclusions.

Synthesize

It’s important that your conclusion doesn’t just repeat everything you’ve written or discussed in the body of the paper. This makes the conclusion difficult to read and can be very anti-climactic. Instead of summarizing, you should instead synthesize. Instead of telling your readers what you discussed, tell them how the things you discussed were connected to your initial question and to each other.

Another good thing to avoid in this part would be the phrase “and then”—while it’s an important phrase, it’s best to write it down minimally as seeing this over and over again can cause you to give into writing lazily. For example, one might be tempted to simply write, “We discussed marine plants and then we talked about why they were important and then we talked about the different challenges we encountered.” This doesn’t offer any new insight into your topic and doesn’t properly conclude your English composition.

Include Insight

This is very important when writing any kind of English composition. What did you learn from your study or paper? How did it change your outlook on life? What is the relevance of your findings? What new possibilities does it open? Which old ones does it shut or eliminate?

Don’t Be Melodramatic

Be careful not to be overly sentimental or too overt when trying to evoke emotions in your readers. Remember that this is an interaction—you should provide the stimuli and the readers should react; you can’t supply both the stimuli and the reaction. It’s okay to state that you felt certain things, depending on the context of the paper (like for example, if you’re writing a reflection paper), but be careful not to over-exaggerate.

Circle Back to the Introduction

Your conclusion should mirror your introduction; you should address all the points you brought up in your introduction here. Talk about whether you were able to answer the questions you initially had in mind—if so, how did this contribute to or alter the way you were able to think about it? If not, why was this so? What do you think can be done to come to a conclusion about those questions?  However, just as you have to be careful not to just reiterate what you talked about throughout the entire paper, it’s also important not to simply re-state the entire introduction.

In this lesson, we were able to discuss how to write a good conclusion. We were able to talk about the different things that one should and shouldn’t do when writing this last part of your English compositions. From there we were able to identify different techniques that we can use when writing the final part of our papers.

Next we’ll be talking about the nuances of editing and proofreading your paper. We’ll be looking at different tips that you can follow to be able to come up with revisions that are necessary to coming up with a good paper.