CONCLUSION AND SUMMARIES TO ESSAY WRITING

1. CONCLUSIONS

Most readers need to feel closure in all kinds of writing: letters, imaginative literate, and arguments. Conclusions are not always easy to write, particularly because by the time we get around to thinking about writing an ending, we are often tired of the whole project. But you don’t need to be a master rhetorician to write an effective ending. A conclusion that is direct, precise, and appropriate to the occasion will do the job just fine. Depending on the context, it can be as short as a paragraph or as long as a chapter.

A.  Types of conclusions

Argument can have three basic of conclusion:

1.      The finding or results of an investigation

Findings. The finding or results conclusion usually end argument or fact such as the reporting of a scientific experiment or a case study. Some casual arguments, such as certain historical studies, may also end with findings or results. Actually, these findings are the argument’s claim,which may be given in general from early in the argument and then with more detail at the end, or they may be given only at the end.

2.      A recommendation or a set of recommendations

Recommendations typically conclude arguments of recommendation. The purpose is to tell reader exactly what the argument expects to them. If the findings conclusion tells readers what they should know, the recommendation conclusion tells readers what they should do.

3.      A  more general closing reflecting on the argument or raising other consideration related to the central claim.

General closing. The general closing is what we usually think of when we think of conclusions. This type of conclusion can work in several ways: it can move from the specific argument to a statement of the argument’s broader significance, it can suggest future direction for research, or it can raise related issues. The general conclusion suggests a movement onward(where we go from here) or a movement outward (how this specific argument relates to other arguments), though the emphasis in any case will vary between these two elements.

A word of caution about all conclusions: the conclusion must not lie outside the boundaries of what you can legitimately claim in your argument. You should not, for example, turn an argument about the weakness of a certain school’s curriculum into a conclusion uniformly condemning all schools, though your conclusion may suggest that the case you have examined is not a isolated one. In other words, don’t over generalize from the evidence you used to support your argument. Nor should you use your conclusion as the place to launch a whole new argument or to make claims that do not have some basis in what has preceded.

B.   Summaries

A conclusion is different from summary, which is a restatement of the main points of your argument. Most short or medium-length arguments(five hundred to five thousand words) do not require a summary; final summaries are typically found in very long essays, in essays with difficult subject matter, or in books.

            Writers of arguments sometimes provide a summary of the basic point preceding the argument. Such summaries are usually either separate from or at the very beginning of the argument. Typically they take one of two forms: the abstract, often used in academic or technical research, and the executive summary, often used in business reports and proposals.

            An abstract is a summary, typically in paragraph form, that states the essential points of the essay so that the reader can grasp these point without having to read the essay; in the other words the good abstract can stand alone, being meaningful by it self. If the reader read only the abstract, they will of course much of the argument’s main claims are. With the flood of information confronting us all. Abstract have the obvious value of helping us decide what research needs further investigation and what can be left alone.

            Executive summary are often longer than abstract, though they should not usually be longer than a page. Like abstract, they give the main points of an argument, but they may also contain some background on why the report was written and on the scope of the original study. If the executive summaries is of a recommendation report, the major recommendation should be included in it. Like abstract, executive summaries should be written to stand alone; readers should be able to get major point of the report without referring to the report itself.

            Executive summaries have become increasingly common as business executives and other manegers find themselves confronted with an overwhelming number of reports to read. The executive summary allows reader to decide if they want to read further, or if the summary alone provides enough information. Unlike abstracts, which are often intended for a specialist audience, executive summaries usually have a nonspecialist audience of higher manegers who may be very far removed from the technical details of the report. The executive summary should allow for the audience’s lack of familiarity with these details by avoiding specialized vocabulary whenever possible and by defining any specialized terms that are used. In the other word, executive summaries demand great attention to the readers’ needs and great precision in wording. Typically they are written after the report is finished,the the writer knows all its twists and turn.