92 – Introductions
r how to decide on your own governing motive or motives
which take account of differing viewpoints either
contained in the essay topic or discovered in your reading
r how to model your introduction in such a way that it
makes clear the sequence of issues to be taken up in the
body of the essay without your having to say so explicitly
r how to structure the introduction to a research paper
which is not an answer to a set question.
1
The constituents of an essay
What Aristotle has to say about a speech applies equally to a modern
academic essay: the introduction states your proposition or answer,
and the body of the essay justifies that answer. Our study in chapter 2
of the ways in which you can reflect on your essay topic has already
prepared you for the writing of your introduction. In this chapter
we shall say more about how you can establish your case. Chapter 5
will take up the problems of justifying or demonstrating that case. In
chapter 6 we learn how to write that part of an essay which Aristotle
thought only an optional element, the conclusion.
We shall think of an essay, therefore, as a structure with an
introduction, a middle and an end. The introduction states your case,
the middle justifies it and the end reflects on the beginning and the
middle. Within this broad structure there are quite a few elements
which also have to be taken into account, fitted together and turned
into a coherent unity.
These elements are set out below. As you study them, bear
in mind particularly that this list is not a sequence of stages in the
setting-out of an essay. Nor is it an ordered formula which you can
apply in a uniform manner to every essay you write. The discipline
in which you are writing, the essay topic itself and the nature of the
answer you decide to give will all affect which of the elements you
emphasise, how you will treat them and where in the essay some of
r how to decide on your own governing motive or motives
which take account of differing viewpoints either
contained in the essay topic or discovered in your reading
r how to model your introduction in such a way that it
makes clear the sequence of issues to be taken up in the
body of the essay without your having to say so explicitly
r how to structure the introduction to a research paper
which is not an answer to a set question.
1
The constituents of an essay
What Aristotle has to say about a speech applies equally to a modern
academic essay: the introduction states your proposition or answer,
and the body of the essay justifies that answer. Our study in chapter 2
of the ways in which you can reflect on your essay topic has already
prepared you for the writing of your introduction. In this chapter
we shall say more about how you can establish your case. Chapter 5
will take up the problems of justifying or demonstrating that case. In
chapter 6 we learn how to write that part of an essay which Aristotle
thought only an optional element, the conclusion.
We shall think of an essay, therefore, as a structure with an
introduction, a middle and an end. The introduction states your case,
the middle justifies it and the end reflects on the beginning and the
middle. Within this broad structure there are quite a few elements
which also have to be taken into account, fitted together and turned
into a coherent unity.
These elements are set out below. As you study them, bear
in mind particularly that this list is not a sequence of stages in the
setting-out of an essay. Nor is it an ordered formula which you can
apply in a uniform manner to every essay you write. The discipline
in which you are writing, the essay topic itself and the nature of the
answer you decide to give will all affect which of the elements you
emphasise, how you will treat them and where in the essay some of