Let’s be frank; in the grand scheme of things, while we can provide the 4 steps to write good GP essay introductions, it is, in reality, not the most important thing. Certainly, well-written introductions set a good impression for your upcoming arguments (and essay), but it is the depth and nuance of your arguments and body paragraphs that matter.
Nevertheless, having these 4 steps to outline how to write good GP essay introductions can still serve to give your essays a little bit of a boost. Think of it as the spices that give certain dishes a major kick in fragrance.
Do take note, however, that mastering writing introductions should not be your first priority if you are still struggling with your body paragraphs or even ideation process.
Nevertheless, we go!
First Step on How to Write Good GP Essay Introductions: Define Your Key Terms
This is an incredibly important step, since this step essentially sets the direction for your essays. It is no exaggeration to say that defining your key terms erroneously can possibly lead to your analyses going astray, or your essay going entirely out of point.
At the same time, clear definitions of your essay’s key terms in the essay signals your interpretation of the question to the examiners. Whether or not the interpretation is valid is up for discussion, but in signalling your interpretation, the examiners would have a clear idea of how you intend to approach the essay’s thesis and how you intend to argue.
While this may seem trivial, it is indeed an essential step if you want to write good GP essay introductions. Crucially, this implies to your examiners that you know what you are doing; if done successfully, this would leave a great first impression of you as a candidate!
That said, how do we actually go about this to ensure that we know how to write good introductions in GP essays? It can be (and, really, often is) a very easy process, where we simply analyse the meaning of the question’s assertions. However, we will leave this for another post!
Second Step on How to Write Good GP Essay Introductions: Summarise Your Arguments
This step is no mystery; it is exactly what it sounds like. For this tip, you simply need to summarise the arguments that you have ideated for the essay question.
That said, this, of course, depends on your grasp on the ideation process and whether you have the necessary concepts and content to produce the arguments. Lacking these things will render this point moot. Nevertheless, we can discuss the ideation process in a different post!
Summarising one’s arguments in the essay can be quite straightforward, as it simply requires you to summarise the topic sentences that you would utilise at the beginning of your body paragraphs. At the same time, you should address any specific nuances as needed.
Building on the previous point on setting a good impression for your examiners, a summary of your arguments also helps your examiners understand and pre-empt the flow of your essay. Once that has been established, it usually leads to an easier read. To write good GP essay introductions, an easier read is key.
If it makes for easy reading, then it would typically lead to clearer writing!
Third Step on How to Write Good GP Essay Introductions: Thesis Statement
This should be something with which you are all familiar: every well-written essay would have a clear and concise thesis statement to round off your arguments. This is the recurring step to write good GP essay introductions; most – if not all – teachers would insist that their students write these in their essays.
In short, a well-written thesis statement would be a one- or two-sentence answer to the given question. It should encapsulate the essence of your entire argument. In so doing, you not only ensure that your essay is relevant, but that it is nuanced enough to tackle the intricacies of the question.
It is difficult to emphasise just how important this step is in order to write good GP essay introductions. Some examiners may even heavily penalise your essay should the thesis statement be absent in your introductions. So, do remember to include this step in your introductions!
The ideation of your thesis statements is entirely dependent on your points. Furthermore, there are some technical aspects that go into the writing your thesis statements to ensure that they are succinct, nuanced and clear. We will discuss this in another post!
Fourth Step on How to Write Good GP Essay Introductions: Hooks (Optional)
Now, if you were to ask me personally, I would actually discourage my students from writing hooks. Hooks, as their name implies, are ways to immediately hook a reader’s attention. These ways include the usage of interesting trivia facts, quotes, stories and the such.
However, the biggest trouble with hooks is that you would have to find a way to connect the hooks to your essay and its arguments. Often, when students use hooks in their introductions, they hold little to no relevance to the rest of the essay and are instead used for the sake of it. As a result, this undermines the integrity of the essay, even if it may not be the most critical part of it.
Yet, hooks can serve to embellish the essay. It can indeed add flavours to the essay, since they are by their nature meant to arouse the interest of the readers.
Nevertheless, I would still maintain that it is not crucial to write good GP essay introductions. So, include this at your own discretion; even then, only do so if you have mastered the other steps!
Write Good GP Essay Introductions: An Example and Epilogue
So, how would these steps look like in application? Let us assume that we have a question like that below:
Discuss the view that dissenting voices should be censored.
Based on the question above, we have a graphic below that highlights how an example of a well-written introduction can be done:
For all the talk about the steps to write good GP essay introductions, at the end of the day, well-written introductions are still not as important as writing high-quality body paragraphs and ideating nuanced arguments.
We hope that this article has been useful. If you are looking for a free trial lesson for GP tuition or H2 History tuition, please feel free to contact us at any time!
Featured Image by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash