| Draft Your
Introduction
Part of writing your paper will involve drafting a beginning
for your paper. This “beginning” or introduction
to your paper is the first thing that your audience reads,
so it is what you use to make your first impression on your
reader. The introduction begins to show the reader the quality
of your paper—both in terms of writing style and content.
You definitely want this first impression to be a good one,
and you’ll have to make some decisions to make your introduction
an invaluable part of your paper.
Perhaps one of the most common kinds of introductions used
within research papers is the “inverted pyramid” style
paragraph. This style of introductory paragraph moves from
a general statement about a trend or an idea and then works
toward the specific. Let’s look at an example of how
it works.
The Puritans left England in a time of religious persecution
and fled to a country they believed would offer the freedom
to worship as they liked. The irony in this situation is that
they denied others that same liberty. William Bradford's Of
Plymouth Plantation offers insight to the struggles faced by
the Pilgrims while trying to sustain a community based on Puritan
piety. Bradford shows the colony's demise through the citizens'
adherence to a moral and religious code.
In the example above, the first sentence sets up the context
of the paper and engages the reader (that the paper will relate
to the religious persecution of the Puritans). Each sentence
that follows it becomes more specific, and this increasing
specificity culminates in the most specific sentence-- the
thesis statement that sets up what the paper will be about.
As in the example above, your introduction should accomplish
two general purposes: engage your reader and establish your
thesis.
Engage Your Reader
You can use many techniques to engage your reader. Your goal
is to set up a context within and for your paper that is both
interesting and informative for your audience. The Allyn
and Bacon Handbook provides another way to think about your introductions:
think of your introduction as a transition. Your introduction
leads the reader from his or her outside world into the world
of your paper (p. 151).
Several strategies can help you lead your reader into the
world of your paper or set up a context in your introduction.
What kind of context you need to provide or how you go about
engaging your audience depends on what kind of information
your audience needs in order to understand your discussion.
Below are a few strategies that you may employ in drafting
an introduction for your paper. We’ve included an example
of each kind of introduction as well. Just click on one of
the following links to learn more about each strategy.
These are only a few of the strategies available for you
to use. And, these strategies can be used in combination
to engage
your reader in and provide a context for your paper. How
do you know which strategy or combination of strategies
to choose?
As you think about trying different strategies in your paper,
you’ll need to ask yourself several questions:
- What strategy would my audience or reader expect?
- What
information would my audience need in order to understand
or be prepared for my thesis?
- What strategy is most meaningful
for my thesis statement?
Essentially, you’ll need to consider your writing situation
carefully to determine which strategy to use to begin your
paper.
Establish Your Thesis
Again, two parts make up the introduction: engaging your reader
and establishing your thesis. While engaging your reader is
the first thing you do in your introduction, establishing your
thesis is something you’ve probably already done. Our
goal in this handout is not to help you develop a thesis but
rather to consider how a thesis statement fits into an introduction.
You can find more information about how to craft a thesis statement
in the handout “Define
the Purpose, Consider the Audience, and Develop the Thesis.”
As a reminder, a thesis statement is the controlling idea
for your paper. In the inverted pyramid introduction, the final
sentence in the introductory paragraph(s) often states the
thesis statement. It may include the main idea you wish to
communicate, your attitude toward the idea, and your purpose.
Your “attitude toward the idea” is your opinion
of the topic. Your thesis cannot be a statement of fact (i.e.
husbands and wives assume marital roles), but rather your thesis
statement has to be an assertion about that fact.
Let’s look at an example.
| Audience |
Psychology students, especially those who
plan to offer marriage counseling, |
| Purpose |
need to be informed |
| Main Idea and Your Attitude |
that marital roles adopted by husbands and wives are
determined as much by their individual social networks
as by family history or personal values. |
In the example above, you can see that the writer identified
the audience for her paper. You also may need to identify your
audience, depending upon your instructor’s guidelines.
But remember, even if you don’t have to directly state
your audience, your audience will play a large role in what
you’re writing about.
Frequently, an organizational statement will follow or perhaps
even be part of the thesis statement. Organizational statements
list the order of discussion and the details included in the
paper's supporting paragraphs.
Let’s look at an example that establishes the context
and provides a thesis.
In the last 20 years, hot air balloons have gained a significant
amount of attention. Recently, this focus has caught the eye
of the media, with numerous adventurers seeking to stake their
claim as the great firsts in this thrill-seeking sport (context).
Communication students (audience), particularly those individuals
wishing to enter the field of broadcasting (more specific
audience),
need to become familiar with this recent mid-air craze as it
is certain to capture the public's curiosity (purpose
and controlling idea). This paper discusses the various motivations for these
types of trips (main idea 1), examines their successes and
failures (main idea 2), and identifies the future trends in
hot air ballooning (main idea 3) for these sky-venturers who
have floated their way into today's headlines (organizational
statement identifying three main ideas to be discussed).
In this example, we’ve indicated the main parts of the
introduction: the context, purpose, controlling idea, audience,
and organizational statement. This paper’s introduction
sets up the author’s purpose and audience with the statement “Communication
students, particularly those individuals wishing to enter the
field of broadcasting, need to become familiar with this recent
mid-air craze as it is certain to capture the public’s
curiosity.” This information conveys to the reader that
the purpose is informative; the audience is communication students,
especially those entering broadcasting; and the controlling
idea concerns the recent craze related to hot air ballooning.
The organizational statement follows and identifies the three
main ideas that the paper will discuss: “various motivations;” “successes
and failures of trips;” and “future trends.”
This handout has given you a lot of strategies concerning
how to begin your paper and information about what elements
make up an introduction. But, there are a few things that you
shouldn’t do in an introduction.
1. Don’t apologize for your topic.
2. Don’t repeat your paper’s title in the introduction,
unless it’s part of a quoted line, book title, etc.
3. Don’t define terms that would be familiar to your
audience (i.e. Webster’s definitions).
4. Don’t begin your paper with trite phrases (such as “from
the dawn of man” or “in today’s world).
Writing introductions can be a difficult part of the writing
process. But, you can write your introduction either at the
beginning of the writing process or after you’ve written
you paper. Don’t feel pressured to begin the writing
process by writing the introduction. You can begin with a body
paragraph and write the introduction later.
Ultimately, when you write your introduction isn’t as
important as what you actually say in it. Although, if you
write your introduction at the beginning of the writing process,
you will want to reread your introduction as a critical reader
to ensure that your introduction reflects what you did in your
paper.
|
