No essay can be without a conclusion. Although it is not the central part of your work, it is definitely the most important one. A good last paragraph will show how well you are educated about your topic. It will also show your analytical skills, critical thinking, and ability to prioritize important information.
Learning how to conclude essays can be quite a challenging task. It takes a lot of practice and effort. However, it doesn't matter how many times you have written a good paper. You may still feel confused about the right structure or content of the last paragraph. So let’s see how to write the last paragraph of an essay. Learn just a few basic steps, use this guide as an example, and you’ll never have problems writing it again.
What Is a Concluding Paragraph?
Good conclusions for essays must do a number of things for your work. First, they must draw alone to your main body. Hence, they have to put a closure to your research, depiction, or discussion. This section of your essay starts right after the main body of the paper, and it sends a clear message that your work on the chosen topic is over.
Next, it has to sum up the information you have collected throughout your work and recall the main ideas, thoughts, and discoveries you have offered throughout the text. At this point, you need to analyze your text and define the key moments carefully.
At last, you have to address your thesis statement. The main information you have collected in the main body has to connect to a thesis you set in the introduction. A good conclusion would start with a topic sentence that answers the thesis statement. The rest of the text below will be an explanation of how the writer has come to this.
As you can see, your last paragraph doesn’t have to have much information. It also doesn’t and shouldn’t have any new information. Everything that is written there must come from the text that you have completed before it. The key here is to put those elements in the right order and know how to find them in the text. However, before you start learning how to structure a conclusion, you have to understand what belongs in the conclusion paragraph first. Knowing its key components is one thing. Implying them in your work is a completely different one.
How to Form a Conclusion Paragraph?
The structure of a conclusion paragraph is more or less the same for the majority of cases. You just have to learn the foundation and then apply it to every case. So, whenever you think about how to structure a conclusion, think of the triangle. Yes, triangle. This shape is the basis for conclusion examples for essays of any type and length.
Imagine one regular triangle, and use it as your guide. That’s the structure you want to pursue. You have to start with the specific question in mind. Look at your thesis statement once again. You have to address it early on in the beginning. Once you have stated your results solely based on the text above, you can move onto more general information about your work. Hence, you slowly move from the top point of the triangle to its bottom. Remember that visual when you are working on the last part of your essay.
What Belongs in the Conclusion Paragraph?
All conclusion paragraph examples for essays will have the same elements in them.
All conclusion sentence examples for essays will have three main parts plus a call for action when needed. Those parts are:
- Topic sentence (an answer to a thesis statement).
- Summary of main points (background, their connection).
- Closing sentence (provides closure).
- A call for action (optional).
Whenever you are looking at how to conclude essay examples, you’ll find the same elements and same structure present in all of them. Hence, truly, once you master the basics of writing, you’ll master them all. Here are a few tips, though, that will help you in your learning.
Use the Introduction as Your Guide
Your introduction has all the questions that you need to address in your last paragraph. When writing an introduction, you set the theme for the paper, choose relevant questions, and state a thesis. Well, all of those things have to be present in your wrap-up as well. The only difference between these two paragraphs is that the last one has to provide readers with your answers. Hence, you have to see the question you have asked in the beginning and seek out the answer that you offered in the text. Lose the question and go with an answer only.
However, beware of the trap here. Many students tend to simply repeat their introduction with little to no difference at all. Instead of following the same mistake, you need to rephrase your intro. Use its text as the template of what you have to say. However, keep in mind that an introduction, unlike the last section of your work, is an upside-down triangle. Meaning that an introduction starts with general information and ends with specifics such as a thesis statement. Hence, you have to consider that difference when using an into your guide.
Follow Your Research
Never put any information in your summary that you did not have in the main body of your essay. The last step of your work is to recap everything you have already written. Find information that you deem important and go with it. Look for the main theme of each paragraph. Each of them must carry the main idea that you were trying to research. Well, the answer to that main idea belongs to your concluding paragraph.
However, simply recapping the main point and discoveries of your work is not enough. It will be best if you can make links between your discoveries, explaining how all of them created a solid background for your conclusion. Hence, you’ll have to recall the central themes and ideas presented throughout the text once, also connecting them to the thesis, showing how they have elaborated the answer.
