Quick Conclusions

Welcome back to the cause everybody. Now in today’s lecture we’re going to talk about a paragraph where many students do make a few mistakes having marked and corrected hundreds of essays myself. I have noticed a pattern wherein students having worked so hard at the introduction and the body they’ve usually run out of time. By the time they get to the conclusion and the conclusion comes across as a little bit rushed. So in today’s lecture we going to learn how to write conclusions quickly but also accurately so that you can finish in style and leave the examiner with a very strong impression. So let’s start by having a look at an example conclusion. Now we have an exercise here very short one. I just want you to read this conclusion to a task to write in question and match each sentence 1 to two to its purpose A to B. So in conclusion although renting can be useful for people who need a home on a short term basis this convenience comes at a high cost. In my opinion the benefits of renting are outweighed by the drawbacks and I would prefer to buy a property rather than to rent one. So we’ve got two purposes here and can you match them up with summarizing the key points. Or we giving our opinion. Not too difficult on this one. A match is up to one summarizing the key points. I’ll be matches up to 2. Giving your own opinion it’s a little bit more logical to structure the conclusion this way is it makes sense to leave the reader with a clear understanding of what your viewpoint is. Remember this is only for discussion opinion essays or opinion essays. This one here looks like a discussion opinion essay because we have looked at the drawbacks. Now there are some very important words and phrases in this conclusion which were going to focus on the moment. In conclusion very clear introduction to the type of paragraph that we’re writing all though which allows us to introduce a sense of contrast and complexity to the sentence and in my opinion where we’re giving some language which makes it very clear what we’re doing in this sentence. Now there are other ways we can use each of these categories and you can see these here introducing a conclusion very simple. In conclusion or to sum up or having looked at both sides not expressing an opinion. In my opinion. Personally in my view. I’m sure you can think of more. My view is that it is my belief that things like that. And then these linking devices very important particularly when we’re looking at discussion essays or discussion opinion essays. Although while whereas despite In spite of be careful with despite or in spite of as these will need to be followed by a noun or a gerund which is a verb in a noun form. We’ll have a look at a couple more examples to help us here. So you can see how we’ve used the language on the previous slide to create a very coherent and cohesive and accurate conclusion here. To sum up while there are disadvantages to hand writing such as compromised readability and a greater time commitment these must be weighed against a cultural and practical benefits. The handwriting offers. Personally I feel that these benefits outweigh the drawbacks. No other conclusion. In conclusion despite the convenience and lower cost. Homeschooling offers we must take into consideration the dangers of fewer social opportunities and real world experience. In my view these drawbacks outweigh the disadvantages and I would not want to homeschool my children. There is something very important to take into consideration here as well. And that is that we are not just saying that there are pros and cons we are not just saying yeah. So in conclusion there are some advantages and disadvantages. Personally I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We’re not saying that all that would do is rephrase your introduction. Instead we are actually summarizing our ideas and our arguments and our content. So in the first conclusion you can see how we’ve summarized our body paragraph ideas by writing phrases like Compromised readability greater time commitment cultural and practical benefits. And in the second conclusion you can see convenience and low cost dangers of fewer social opportunities and real world experience. So a very clear summary of the ideas put forward in the body of the USA. Let’s move on to look at a problem and solution conclusion because this is a little bit different to the other structure. Problem and solution says which most situation essays fall into are slightly different in that you are not being asked for a specific opinion. So in this conclusion after summarizing the content of your essay summarizing what the problems are. You should state who you think the responsibility for solving these problems lies with. So let’s have a look at an example. In conclusion although modern cities face a variety of problems such as crime and air pollution these problems are not insurmountable. You can see in the bottom corner they’re insurmountable just means impossible to overcome impossible to tackle. In my view it is the government’s responsibility to tackle these issues and they should begin by considering some of the solutions proposed above kennett’s a nice rhythm to the conclusion here nice and fluent incoherent and we haven’t just said there are problems. We’ve actually said what they are. Crime and air pollution okay and we’ve made a very clear statement as to who we think should tackle the issues. The government. So we summarize the key points and then we state who the responsibility lies with for problem and solution says. Again just to point out a few pieces of useful vocabulary. Some nice expression face a variety of problems face colour case very strongly with problems and these problems are not insurmountable. Again as mentioned earlier insurmountable impossible to overcome. Finally it is the government’s responsibility to tackle these issues and they should begin by considering some of the solutions proposed above. You could use this entire template and just remove the word government and put in whoever you think should solve the problem. Parents teachers school authorities environmental agencies whoever you think is responsible. Now if you’re out of time and this is a very common occurrence because of the amount of time some people spend on the introduction the body they haven’t really been paying attention to that time then you may struggle to write two sentences. And if that’s the case you can just write one sentence and there is an advantage for writing one sentence as well. It improves the complexity of your sentence. And of course it saves you time because it’s extremely important that you have at least a couple of minutes to go back and check your essay. As we looked at in the timing lecture ideally five minutes but at least a couple of minutes. What we need to do is simply combine the summary of the key points sentence with our opinion sentence to create one sentence. Here’s an example. In conclusion despite the culture shock and potential high cost of moving abroad I believe that the prospect of broadening one’s horizons is a positive which outweighs any and all negatives. Again we are not just saying pros and cons we’ve got what they are. Culture shock high cost vs. broadening one’s horizons. But in this case what we’ve done is that we’ve inserted. I believe that into the place after the comma so that we are able to give an opinion while at the same time contrasting the pros and cons and covering all the task requirements. So it’s as simple as that. So you just use your contrasting word such as Despite all whereas a while Waldo asked in conclusion even then follow the contrasting word with one side of the argument or one side of the discussion. Remembering to paraphrase the content of your essay you follow that with. I believe that or my view is that. Well personally I feel any of that opinion language and then you follow it up with a summarization of the content of the side that you agree with. So practice this a few times. It can take a bit of work before you become confident in it and before your speed improves that much so do take a few opportunities to practice a conclusion which only has one sentence. Just for those that are quite sure broadening one’s horizons just means expanding one’s range of knowledge interests and experiences quite useful when we’re talking about travel. So to sum up. In conclusion do not simply state that the topic has benefits and drawbacks or that each viewpoint has pros and cons. This does nothing to summarize the main ideas which is the purpose of a conclusion but only rephrases your introduction. If you struggle to paraphrase then you may want to skip forward for a moment to the synonyms and paraphrasing lecture which is in the lexical resource section of the course or we will get there eventually. And that brings me to my next point. Do try to paraphrase the content of your essay. If you write greater affordability as an advantage in your body try something like less expensive in your conclusion. Again paraphrasing lexical resaw section we will come to this. Finally do not add any unnecessary information in your conclusion. This is a waste of time and you should try to save as much time as possible to check for errors in your work. That’s much more likely to improve your score than adding unnecessary information. So there we go conclusions. We’ve now reached the end of the essay so we can talk about how to improve the essay as a whole in the remainder of this course.