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The last paragraph of any essay is the icing on the cake. The final word caps off all that sentence-by-sentence thinking and writing. But what kind of conclusion should you write? Are there different types of conclusions? How do you ensure yours is effective? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself before concluding your essay. A good ending puts your reader in mind by tying together each of your argument’s strands. It also helps readers remember your main points and why they are important to cover in more detail in the future or later. Here’s how you can write an effective conclusion for an expository essay:

Summarize your essay’s key points

The first thing you should do in your conclusion is to summarize all the main points you made in your essay. Make sure you cover all the important ones, leaving out any side arguments or tangents that don’t actually help you highlight your essay’s key points. You can also summarize in your conclusion how your essay addresses and challenges the reader’s beliefs and ideals. For example, you can summarize in your conclusion that your essay aims to provide readers with a new perspective and alternative way of thinking about a particular issue. You can also summarize in your conclusion how and why you arrived at your essay’s argument. Why did you choose which points to address and which to leave out? Why did you begin with your initial premise? Why did you choose to write your essay in the way you did? What is the overall message you want your readers to take away after reading your essay?

The conclusion should tie together your argument

The conclusion of your essay should tie together all the individual parts of your argument. It should flow smoothly from the introduction to your body and then to the final part of your essay in the conclusion. It’s a perfect opportunity for you to restate your argument and reiterate the main points you want your readers to remember from your essay. Don’t just regurgitate your argument in conclusion. Instead, make it more concise yet still relevant to the overall message you want to leave your readers with. There are many ways you can do this. One way is to incorporate some of the important takeaways from your essay that you summarized in your conclusion. If you summarize your key points in your conclusion, then you can also use these as points in your conclusion. You can also tie your argument together through rhetorical questions and statements.

Use your conclusion to reinforce the message of your essay

The conclusion of your essay should serve as a reinforcement of the overall message of your essay. It should show how the issues, problems, and ideas you addressed in your essay are still relevant in the present time. It should show how the people who have been negatively affected by these issues are still struggling and are still being negatively affected. It should also offer hope for how these issues might be improved or solved in the future. If you want your readers to walk away from your essay with a different perspective on the issues you discussed and a new way of thinking about them, your conclusion should reinforce this new way of thinking. The conclusion of your essay should not just summarize your arguments and key points but also reinforce their importance and how they relate to the present and future. You can do this through the use of rhetorical questions and statements.

Avoid concluding with a new point or idea

Simply repeating the same points in your conclusion will not only be ineffective, it may also appear as if you are not aware of how to conclude your essay. This is not the impression you want readers to have of you. The way to ensure your conclusion is not too repetitive is to make it a reflection of your essay as a whole. In other words, your conclusion should not simply be a restatement of your arguments and key points but a reflection of how you see those issues, problems, or ideas in the present and how they need to change in the future. For example, if you discussed how increased government regulations hamper business growth in a certain sector in your essay, your conclusion should not simply restate this. Instead, your conclusion should reflect on how regulations are hampering business growth and how regulations might change in the future.

End with an emotional hook to leave an impression

The last sentence of your essay is an opportunity to leave an impression on your readers. You can do this through a powerful emotional hook that captures their attention and holds it until the end of your essay. Emotional hooks are sentences that capture your reader’s attention and make them eager to find out what happens next. A good example of an emotional hook is “In the face of danger, courage is what you need most.” A good emotional hook for your essay’s conclusion can be anything from “This essay has stressed how important it is to examine the ideologies we hold dear” to “This essay has stressed how important it is to consider how we might be negatively affecting others through our actions.” These are some examples of powerful, yet not too lengthy, emotional hooks. However, you should develop your own as these will depend on your essay and audience.

Conclusion guide

Here are a few more pointers on how to write a conclusion for an expository essay. – Keep it short – A conclusion should be no longer than two or three sentences. – Don’t plagiarize – Plagiarism is a serious offense in academic writing. Don’t include any phrases or sentences that are not your own. – Use transition words and phrases – The last part of your conclusion is an opportunity to add transition words and phrases so they help tie your argument together. – End with a rhetorical question – End your essay with a rhetorical question that leads to your conclusion. – Use transition words – Transition words are words that help you tie your conclusion together. Use them to help your essay flow smoothly from one part to another. – Be precise – Be precise when writing your conclusion. Make sure you don’t leave any loose ends. – Think audience – Don’t just write down whatever pops into your head when you come to the end of your essay. Instead, ask yourself who your audience is and what impression you want to leave on them.

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