How and When to Teach Essay Introductions

by Shawn Hassen

Introductions are a nightmare for the novice writer. Chances are, if your students are blinking at a blank paper, tapping their pen on the desk, or glazing over as they stare blankly at a random spot on the wall, they are trying to write an intro.  Here are some tips on how and when to teach essay introductions:

First, don’t attempt intros at the start of the year. Well, maybe if you are teaching seniors or introductory college classes—they might have enough experience to launch right into an intro. But younger students don’t have that experience. Crafting a thesis (see the importance of the thesis sentence in one of my very first posts), staying organized, and packing the body paragraphs with excellent, relevant details and examples can be mind-blowing enough as it is. Let students wrap their minds around the body of the essay before you lead them in exercises on introductions.

I maintained several beliefs about intros during my many years in the classroom:

1) It’s harder to re-train students to write correctly after years of writing wrong then it is to teach them how to do it correctly to start with—so wait for it.

2) Bad intros and conclusions are a waste of everyone’s time.

3) Many students write better intros after they have written the rest of the essay.

4) Less is more (until students are more advanced writers and can sustain the longer abstractions inherent to intros and conclusions).

Depending upon the age I was teaching, I embarked on introductions ¼ or ½ into the school year after students had writing experience (with the body of the essay) under their belts. I always drew a triangle, point down. (Later when we discuss the conclusion, we will flip this triangle right side up). I labelled the top, broad side of the triangle Broad Hook. I labelled the center of the triangle Narrowing Down, and I labelled the point at the bottom Thesis. Once I taught them the “upside down” triangle diagram of the introduction, I continually placed it before them as a reminder.

An introduction begins very broad. It starts with a “hook” that is not stupid or goofy or off topic or a comedy routine, but is something intriguing or interesting that is related to the topic of the essay (students miss this point sometimes), and what we mean by "broad" is that it comes from universal ideas outside of the literature. From this hook, students will progressively “narrow” the topic to bring it closer and closer to the actual thesis sentence. Hence, the inverted triangle with the point of the shape culminating in the very specific thesis sentence (the last sentence of the introduction). Note that in the course of narrowing the topic, we should identify the name of the literature and its author.

The trick to writing an intro is to compose it backward. Let’s say that I’m writing about Lord of the Flies, and my thesis sentence is the following: Golding creates the conch as a symbol for civilization, and he delivers a powerful commentary on what the breakdown of this civilization looks like.

To create an intro, I work backward from this thesis. I look for the key idea I am focusing on in this essay, and it’s civilization. So what can I brainstorm that is a broad, big-picture introduction to civilization? Well, it’s a book about boys living on an island without parents . . .maybe that will get me somewhere. Let’s try this:

Every child dreams of a life without parents—no bedtimes, no baths, no vegetables.  But what does life truly look like without rules?  In his novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding sets a group of schoolboys on a deserted island in order to answer that very question.  Some of the boys long for order and stability of the adult world, while others grab for power and pleasure.  In this wild island setting, Golding creates the conch as a symbol for civilization, and he delivers a powerful commentary on what the breakdown of this civilization looks like.

Note that I tweaked the lead-in of my thesis sentence in order to connect it smoothly to the previous sentence.

Create a couple of introductions with your students, together, on the whiteboard or smartboard. Let them see how you brainstorm the key ideas of your thesis sentence in order to work backward so that the end product is an introduction that starts off broad and interesting, narrowing to the very specific topic and thesis sentence of the essay. Once you turn students loose, give them the freedom to write the intro after they have completed their body paragraphs if that works better for them. Their first couple of attempts might be halting and jerky, but with some revision practice, they should start to improve dramatically and quickly.