Conclusions

Welcome back everybody thank you for sticking with me.

We are on to conclusion.

Today’s the final lecture of our section.

Organizing your ideas we’ve come up with a creative and incisive title.

We have a solid these the statement an introduction our body paragraphs are unified and coherent and

transitional well and now we need to come up with a conclusion that leaves our paper with a bang.

All right so it’s like always us.

Let’s begin today by talking of the purpose of a conclusion.

There are three main purposes that a good conclusion needs to satisfy.

The first is to recall the purpose of your paper or recall your thesis statement not word for word.

This is not a direct repetition of your thesis statement but just to remind your reader of what your

entire argument has been.

The next purpose is to answer the so what who cares.

Why is it so important.

So what should your reader now understand.

Having read your paper and how does your argument speak to the larger issue.

Finally the third purpose of your conclusion should be to provide some sort of closure so should leave

your readers thinking about your argument in a new and interesting way before I get into some examples

of conclusions today.

Let’s give you some strategies are some tips.

My first strategy I would suggest is to always quickly skim your paper to remember how your argument

has developed.

Usually we write papers over a number of days weeks or even months if we want to write a good conclusion.

The first time through we need to look back and remind ourselves of how our argument has developed so

that we know how to restate the argument in the final conclusion.

You should ask yourselves questions like Why are my ideas important.

Why should my readers care.

The conclusion is not a time for preaching and not a time to provide the moral of the story.

It is also never a time to introduce a new idea that was not ever discussed in the body of the paper.

You should never introduce new ideas even if they’re cool and creative and interesting.

If you do not have time to discuss them within your paper The conclusion is not the time to introduce

them.

Rather what you should do is spin.

Your already discussed ideas in a new and interesting way and I’ll show you some examples of this in

just a moment.

You might also need to remember to fit the conclusion or the length of the conclusion to the length

of the paper.

So if you have a shorter paper say less than eight pages of one paragraph or one the two paragraph conclusion

is perfectly adequate as long as you write it well.

If your paper is much longer than that a one or two paragraph conclusion will seem very short and seem

inadequate providing the conclusion that is necessary for a longer paper.

Finally my last tip is never begin your conclusion with the phrase in conclusion.

The main reason is because you are more creative than that.

At least I hope so.

Let’s go ahead and look at a couple of examples of good conclusions and the different types of conclusions

that work effectively.

The first is to suggest a course of action.

In your paper you’ve argued that in order to celebrate the United States as a multi-cultural society

American city citizens need to stop supporting the ongoing oppression of minority groups through their

economic and political choices.

So again that’s the that’s the main argument of your paper.

So to suggest a course of action we have this conclusion.

People of the United States continue to hold up their country as the world’s symbol of freedom to live

up to this ideal.

However American citizens must begin to realize that through many of their day to day economic decisions

they unknowingly support the various structures systems and corporations that continue to oppress the

minority ethnic religious and gender groups of America.

OK so here we’re suggesting a course of action with words like.

American citizens must must begin to realize rights or suggesting what American citizens need to do.

After having read the paper that we’ve just delivered the next example of the conclusion is a personal

application.

So here again we were using that same paper topic that we just used for the previous conclusion.

And here we have tracing the flow of my personal purchases from the cashiers to the corporate elite

and from the corporate elite to the upholding of oppressive social systems and structures has forever

altered how I choose to use my purchasing power.

So again here it’s a very personal application of what I’m going to do or how I’ve changed because of

the findings I’ve discussed in my paper.

The next examples to show that issues relevance.

Again using that same we’re using the same topic for each of these conclusions.

American politicians have two long overlooked American minorities in favor of keeping American corporations

competitive internationally as a result ethnic religious and gender minorities continue to be oppressed.

The greatest irony however is that everyday American citizens continue to support this ongoing oppression

through their day to day economic decisions to give money to the corporations that uphold oppressive

structures is to blindly oppress ourselves.

OK so here we are.

We’re clarifying the relevance of the larger issue at hand.

And finally our last conclusion example is to refer back to a quotation from the body of the paper.

So to bring the whole paper full circle by referring back to a key quotation here we have America continues

to serve as the economic center of the world the pinnacle of economic freedom.

As Phil Ochs sings.

However the United States is only as rich as the poorest of the poor reminding America that the apparent

economic freedom of America’s elite continues to come at the cost of America’s impoverished.

OK so here we refer back to a key quote that sums up the main topic and also points to the larger issue

at hand.

And these are for very good examples.

Let’s review one more time we have suggests a course of action a personal application to show the issues

relevance and then refer back to a quotation from the body of the paper.

Of course you don’t want to do all of these within one conclusion but depending on what your argument

is in your paper any one of these could be a very good tool to use to format a solid conclusion to your

paper.

And that concludes for us unit 3 so we’ll see you next time for the beginning lecturn unit for.