How to write an introduction

The sun has been out all week! If you have any experience of English weather you will appreciate what a great event this is!

Anyway, my students are approaching examination time and they will need to write an essay – hence this post on writing an introduction to an academic essay. I’ve made a recording of a talk on Wiziq about writing an introduction. You’ll need to create an account at Wiziq to watch the talk – of course it’s free and you’ll be able to view other talks I’ve created there. The talk is accompanied by a powerpoint.

Example academic essay

Today’s post is an example academic essay:

Should the death penalty be restored in the UK?

The restoration of the death penalty for serious crimes is an issue of debate in the UK because of the recent rise in violent crime. The causes, effects and solutions to the problems of violent crime throw up a number of complex issues which are further complicated by the way that crime is reported. Newspapers often sensationalise crime in order to increase circulation and this makes objective discussion more difficult. This essay will examine this topic firstly by considering the arguments put forward by those in favour of the death penalty and then by looking at the arguments opposed to the idea.

The main arguments in favour of restoring the death penalty are those of deterrence and retribution: the theory is that people will be dissuaded from violent crime if they know they will face the ultimate punishment and that people should face the same treatment that they gave out to others. Statistics show that when the death penalty was temporarily withdrawn in Britain between 1965 and 1969 the murder rate increased by 125% (Clark, 2005). However, we need to consider the possibility that other reasons might have lead to this rise. Amnesty International (1996) claims that it is impossible to prove that capital punishment is a greater deterrent than being given a life sentence in prison and that “evidence….gives no support to the evidence hypothesis theory.” It seems at best that the deterrence theory is yet to be proven. The concept of ‘retribution’ is an interesting one: there is a basic appeal in the simple phrase ‘the punishment should fit the crime’. Calder (2003) neatly summarises this argument when he says that killers give up their rights when they kill and that if punishments are too lenient then it shows that we undervalue the right to live. There are other points too in support of the death penalty, one of these being cost. It is obviously far cheaper to execute prisoners promply rather than feed and house them for years on end.

The arguments against the death penalty are mainly ethical in their nature, that it is basically wrong to kill and that when the state kills it sends out the wrong message to the rest of the country. Webber (2005) claims that the death penalty makes people believe that ‘killing people is morally permissable’. This is an interesting argument – would you teach children not to hit by hitting them? Wouldn’t this instead show them that hitting was indeed ‘permissable’? There is also the fact that you might execute innocent people. Innocent people can always be released from prison, but they can never be brought back from the dead. When people have been killed there is no chance of rehabilitation or criminals trying to make up for crimes. For this reason capital punishment has been called ‘the bluntest of blunt instruments’ (Clark, 2005).

In conclusion, the arguments put forward by people who support or are against the death penalty often reflect their deeper principles and beliefs. These beliefs and principles are deeply rooted in life experiences and the way people are brought up and are unlikely to be swayed by clever arguments. It is interesting that in this country most people are in favour of the death penalty yet parliament continues to oppose it. In this case it could be argued that parliament is leading the way in upholding human rights and continues to broadcast the clear message that killing is always wrong.

I hope you can see:

An introduction in three parts:
1. A sentence saying why the topic is interesting and relevant.
2. A sentence (or two) mentioning the difficulties and issues involved in the topic.
3. An outline of the essay.

Main paragraphs with:
1. A topic sentence which gives a main idea/argument which tells us what the whole paragraph is about.
2. Evidence from outside sources which support the argument(s) put forward in the topic sentence.
3. Some personal input from the author analysing the points put forward in the topic sentence and the outside sources.

A conclusion:
Summarises the main points and gives an answer to the question (kind of!).

It’s not perfect, but I think it’s sound enough as an example. I’m not giving you another link today because I think you’ve had enough already!

The THEME ARCHIVE at the British Council website

At last it is getting a bit warmer here in the UK! The winter was the coldest for years with tons of snow, which is unusual for us – we even had a bit of snow in South Devon which is very unusual (it is called ‘The English Riveria’ where I live believe it or not!).

I’d like to tell you about THE THEME ARCHIVE at the British Council Website as a great place to visit to improve your English. Let’s take the topic of global warming – after all it’s always in the news and I guess we should all know more about it. If you go to the THEME ARCHIVE at the British Council website you can find an excellent article on this topic. What I like about the resource is the variety of activities available. Firstly, you can read the article and you can listen to it as well because there is an MP3 audio file with it. You can look up words in an online dictionary really easily by just double clicking on any word and its definition comes up. There are accompanying comprehension exercises and you can write in to give your comments about the article and read what other English learners think about it too. Start exploring this resource by looking at this reading on Aeroplanes and Global Warming here and doing all the activities that go with it.

Answering the essay question: identifying and focusing on the topic

A colleague from the Business School at my university came to me the other day with a pile of essays that his students had written under exam conditions. Unfortunately, some  overseas students had scored quite low marks.  Many students had written quite a lot, but had not answered the question. There are lots of factors involved in answering the question, but one essential first step is IDENTIFYING THE TOPIC correctly.

Let’s take a look at an example essay question

Has the use of target costing in the car industry contributed to its collapse?

Now, stop! Don’t go away because you don’t know anything about target costing or the car industry! Neither do I. This post is useful anyway!

One way of identifying the topic of the essay question is to unpack the question. In order to answer this essay question what smaller questions do you need to ask? You can use the strategy of writing as many ‘mini questions’ as you can about the big essay question. Let’s try it with the question above:

1. What is target costing?

2. Is it used in the car industry?

3. How is it used in the car industry?

4. How serious are the problems in the car industry?

5. Is it fair to say there is a collapse in the car industry?

6. Did target costing help to cause the collapse?

7. What else has caused the collapse of the car industry?

Now look at all those questions! Now we’re getting towards a better understanding of the question. However, many students did not tackle many of these points. Guess which points most students wrote about? Yes, most of the students wrote all about TARGET COSTING. OK, that’s an important part of the question, but you need to think about target costing IN THE CAR INDUSTRY. This means relating what you know about target costing TO THE CAR INDUSTRY! This means giving real life examples of target costing IN THE CAR INDUSTRY.  What many students tended to do was give good theoretical information about target costing, without putting it in the context of the car industry. When you look at the questions 1 – 7 above lots of students answered the questions 1 – 3, and then stopped. It’s only doing half the job, you haven’t finished unpacking and you’ve left half your clothes in your suitcase! If you finish unpacking properly you will see all the smaller questions that your essay should address. After unpacking your essay title it is essential to take time to plan your essay and I’ll say some things about that in my next post.

I’ll leave you with these ideas about understanding essay titles from Andy Gillett’s UEFAP site. Follow the link and go to QUESTIONS in the left hand menu. This is the most comprehensive look at essay question vocabulary (examine, account for, explain, assess etc) that I have seen. It’s here.