How to Write Better Essays

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24 Introductions

In this chapter you will learn:

• why so many of us struggle to write good introductions;


• how to write introductions that leave the examiners with no doubts
  about what you’re doing and why;


• a simple formula for a good introduction.

There are very few students who wouldn’t list introductions as one of

the most difficult aspects of writing an essay. Much of this is due to

the fact that most of us are unsure about what we should be doing

in the introduction. If we don’t know why we’re doing something, what

we’re trying to achieve, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find that we’re

not particularly good at it. But there’s another reason why most of us

are not good at writing introductions: we neglect stages 1 and 3 (inter-

pretation and planning). If we have very little idea what we’re going to

be writing, it’s difficult to do a good job of introducing it.

However, even with a clear interpretation of the question and a well

structured plan it can be a problem, unless you set simple and clear

objectives that you want your introduction to fulfil. These should

include two things:

• the interpretation of the question (what is it getting at?); and


• the structure of your answer, the map the reader is going to follow.

The interpretation of the question

The first question examiners are going to ask themselves as soon as

they begin to read your essay, before they even consider anything else,

is ‘Has the writer seen the point of the question?’ In two or three sen-

tences you need to outline the main issues raised by the question,

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