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Lecture on Introduction Paragraphs When you wrote essays in high school, the introduction paragraph may have seemed like it was one of the least important paragraphs in an essay

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Lecture on Introduction Paragraphs When you wrote essays in high school, the introduction paragraph may have seemed like it was one of the least important paragraphs in an essay. Oftentimes we would start introductions with overly-broad statements like, "People have debated gun control for centuries," or facts like, "William Faulkner was born September 25th, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi." We wrote this way because we were writing essays that were mere vehicles for regurgitating information or lecture notes; our papers were not conversations. On the contrary, the introduction in an academic paper may be the most important and challenging section of the paper because it outlines the conversation that has come before. So, the goals of introduction paragraphs are to summarize what "They Say" and then succinctly describe what "You Say." Imagine you are having a debate with a friend over an issue and another friend joins you: what would you need to tell the friend who just joined to get him or her up to speed and to understand your main claims? There are several different ways one can approach the Introduction, and it's important to select the one that best fits your specific purpose. Here are three patterns of common introductions in academic papers: 1. The Inverted Pyramid In using this approach, the introduction will introduce readers to the subject in broad terms then narrow it down to the paper's thesis or main claim. This is likely the type of introduction with which you are most familiar. The first step is to outline the general debate and main issues or sides to the debate. Then you will have to narrow the conversation further by getting more specific about who has said what in the debate. This is where your sources come in. By the end of the narrowing, you will get down to where you stand on the debate in your main claim, so you can see how the introduction paragraph starts out broad and then narrows to your point, like an inverted pyramid. 2. Fill the Gap We briefly went over this idea in our Chapter 3 lecture. If your main claim is going to point out a gap in the conversation that you intend to fill, then your introduction’s primary purpose should be to outline where the conversation has been and then show there is a hole in the conversation. 3. Exigency If your paper is going to respond to a current event or a personal event, the main duty of your introduction paragraph is to set up the event and explain its significance. If you are writing about your experience in bilingual education, for example, you would want to establish that you had experience in that system. If there was a recent news headline about self-driving cars or ocean acidification, then you would need to explain the event and the conversation around it. These are not the only options for introductions, just some typical patterns. Think about what you need to fill in the conversation.