Introduction

Begin your essay by stating the problem, issue, or topic that you are going to address in the paper, and outline the approach you are going to take in dealing with it. This initial paragraph is sometimes called a thesis statement. A thesis statement is a sentence or series of sentences that defines a subject and a particular position on or understanding of that subject. It demonstrates your knowledge of the material and states (in a provisional way) an interpretation that you believe to be well founded. To construct a thesis statement, you must have a general understanding of the topic, and also considerable detailed and specific knowledge of the material.

Writing the introduction is thus a deceptively simple task. It is not so easy as it looks. Why? Because to provide a defensible thesis statement, you must know the subject reasonably well, and you must have thought through what you are going to say in the paper. You must have considered each argument that supports your view, and each argument that undermines it. You must also have analysed the most reasonable means of presenting your argument. So, although you only need to provide a single statement, to produce that statement you must

1. know the parameters of the question.
2. know the specific vocabulary that describes the question.
3. review the arguments that support and those that undermine your thesis.

In addition to presenting your thesis in summary form, there is a second task that your introduction should perform. You must give your reader a sense of the structure of your essay, i.e. the topics and issued covered and the order in which you propose to tackle them. This second part of your introduction is thus akin to a road map: having read the introduction, your reader should always know what stage of the journey has been reached at any given time. This is particularly important if you expect your essay to be read on-line, since someone reading one screen at a time will find it more difficult to grasp the paper as a whole. Your job in the introduction is to make understanding the argument as easy as possible by spelling out in advance the main stages through which it will be developed.

To recapitulate, the purpose of the introduction is to inform the reader of the specific subject you will discuss and the approach you plan to take, and these points will be outlined summarily in your thesis statement. Your thesis statement will then be followed by a ‘road map’ of the contents of the essay, that is, an indication of the main topics and issues to be discussed and the order in which they will be treated.

Please note that a good essay usually goes through several drafts before it reaches its final form. Similarly, a thesis statement is not carved in stone; indeed, you should regard your initial thesis statement as tentative and preliminary in nature. As you continue to read and analyse your material, your approach may well shift. Keep your preliminary viewpoint in mind, but be flexible: do not reject information or fail to include it because it disproves your initial statement. Indeed your thesis may change several times as your understanding progresses. You may find yourself moving back and forth through the essay, reorganizing the order of the material, shifting the discussion, and changing your position. Do not be alarmed by this process: it is an indicator that you are really thinking and coming to grips with your material. You will probably find that you end up writing the final version of your introduction after you have completed the main body of your paper.