Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 96

They blew out a breath and did the thing all heroes must do – they took that terrifying first step. (Neill, 2016, p. 32)

Introductions can be tough. Let me restart that. I want to introduce this topic properly. If you struggle with introductions, whatever else you are, you are not alone. When we think of our essay – especially if we are thinking of each essay task we need to do (complete the reading, write the introduction, etc.) – we often see the introduction as one of the first bits of actual essay writing. No wonder we sometimes stop so early on, with a sense of frustration and failure. Writing the introduction is not an indication of how tough the whole essay will be and it is often best to come back to the introduction after we have written at least some of the main body of our essay – the sections in between the introduction and conclusion.

This chapter is the first of seven which will examine the actual words of your essay. These chapters aim to clearly demonstrate how you can write an evaluative, smoothly interconnected, crisply written, relevant, well-referenced essay, with a strong conclusion and, as detailed here, an effective introduction. One snag with ‘how to’ writing is that it varies enormously – recipes, flat-pack furniture instructions, Google travel advice and YouTube tutorials on how to make a rocket that can go into space are all part of the extremely broad ‘how to’ family. This chapter attempts to show as well as tell what bad and good writing looks like and to identify some of the steps that can help you to improve your work. It is not quite as step by step as most recipes are, and there are fewer left-over screws than when following most flat-pack furniture instructions, but if you do your bit, practising the suggestions and applying the ideas, I think you will notice a change that you yourself will have brought about.

In this chapter, and those that follow, there are many examples of academic writing. In some cases, these are followed by responses that a reader or marker might have made to the writing. To aid clarity these responses are indicated in italics.

In this chapter you will learn…

 What is special about introductions for student academic essays

 What introductions are and why they matter

 How to write a brilliant introduction – step by step

 How to write introductions like a reader

 How to make sense of feedback concerning introductions