A catchy and concise introduction is extremely important to retain your reader’s attention and help them decide whether they want to finish reading the essay or not. Your words should be powerful enough to catch their attention and make them curious enough to find out what’s coming next. You also have to provide a short sneak peek of what the essay is about without boring them or spilling too much so let’s see how you can accomplish this with the following five tips.
Table of Contents
1. The hook
This is the bait that you throw so that the reader feels compelled to read the next sentence. Your hook should be something unique that sounds different from the everyday cliches that readers come across on written media. There are many types of hooks that you can use:
- Challenge a myth– “Contrary to popular belief, having a four day work week is actually more productive for employees and they deliver high quality work”
- Statistical data that supports your topic– “Ice cream may seem like a children’s dessert but you might be shocked to find out that an average American consumes 13 pounds of ice cream per year”
- Anecdote that connects to your thesis statement– “The most traumatic event of my life was when I moved to the city alone and got paralyzed for a month from a traffic accident”
- Imaginary scenario to make your reader imagine the scenario you are going to present in your argument– “Imagine if you woke up for work and the air in Karachi was as clean as the Swiss countryside’s”
Keep in mind that this should be written in a convincing way and not just thrown in plain words.
2. A short background
In this part of the introduction, it is important to talk a little bit about the background theories, historical and social context and keywords of the topic of your essay but too much details should not be divulged. The explanations and arguments come later so keep them reserved for the body of the essay. For example, if there is an essay about cryptocurrency, you can talk about the evolution of money and how it is bound to change with time.
3. The thesis statement
A thesis statement isn’t a plain fact or announcement of the topic, it is a claim that needs further proof and persuasion that will be shown in the body of the essay. You can look at the following example and see how the writer is not yet defending their statement but just putting the claim in strong words.
“Most families from lower socio-economic backgrounds do not have basic utilities in their houses while there is a stark difference in the lifestyle of the people in richer neighbourhoods. ‘Parasite’ captures this phenomena in a way that has never been done before and that is why the Academy Award received by Bong Joon-ho was well-deserved”
4. A guide map
Most readers, when they start reading the article or essay, drift off due to the complexity of the essay or they are intimidated by the details of the text in the body of the essay. They do not want to anticipate something complicated so to remove this uncertainty in their mind, it is important to give a map of the essay’s structure in a line or two. See the example below to capture your essay’s flow
“In this essay, we will find out how the movie ‘Parasite’ stood out and the hard work that went into the production”
5. Final revision
Usually, while writing the essay, you might make a minor shift in your stance or discover extra information through research that will change your opinion or the flow of the essay. In order to keep the introduction aligned with the changes that your thought process goes through, you must recheck the introduction after finishing the essay and see if there are any changes required in the text. These changes are usually related to what you wrote in the body of the essay.
Takeaway
Keep in mind that all of this should be written in a very clear manner, especially the thesis statement of your essay because it shows the reader how confident you are about the claim that you are making about the topic. This leads the reader to trust you and the research that will be coming later on in the body of the essay. Writing is not something that comes naturally to everyone so if you are running out of time and ideas as your deadline is approaching, our expert writers can help you with your essay. Find out how we can help you finish your homework in time.
