Exploring Classification Essays: Crafting Compelling Introductions and Conclusive Closures

1. The Classification Essay The Introduction

2. The Hook – What and how? • Gets the reader involved, or at least thinking • How to do it? • Sensory details • Example • Narrative/Anecdote • Personal Experience • Question(s) • Statistics • Dialogue

3. Classification Thesis Includes • Topic • Principle of Classification • Where do I put my thesis? • Generally, at the end of the introduction. • Remember that the intro may be more than one paragraph!

4. Other Intro Considerations • Background required for understanding • Significance /relevance of topic (might be in thesis) • Purpose of essay • Inform • Entertain • Tone of essay • Tone should fit topic, purpose, and audience

5. Definition within Classification • Definition – explains what a term means or which meaning is intended • May need a sentence, multiple sentences, or a paragraph • Used in the introduction (to introduce topic) or • Used in each category

6. Definition Review • Definitions include • The term itself • The class to which the term belongs • The characteristics that distinguish the term from others in its class • Guidelines • Should be specific and focused • May use negations – what the term is not – to explain how it is distinct

7. The Classification Essay The Conclusion from Seeing the Pattern

8. The purposes • Bring the essay to a satisfying close • Review the categories • specifically or • generally • Reemphasize the thesis • Offer new insight or perspective on the topic

9. I don’t know how!?! • Revisit the hook from your thesis • Give new info • Provide an additional example • Provide a contrasting example (based on your categories) • Return to why the classification is significant • Elaborate

10. Sample – “Motor Heads” As you can see, car nuts cross all social and economic levels, reflecting the diversity of our society. You probably know a car nut or may be one yourself. America is a nation in love with the automobile. Whatever the variety, car nuts take that love to the next level: obsession. • Revisits idea from intro • Reminds reader of significance of topic • Generalizes (rather than repeats) categories • Provides closure with final statement.

11. Sample: “Seven Ages of Walking” This year, my mother gone, I’m the one who walks my father. Recently, he stopped in a sunny spot and said “Oooh, it’s warm right here.” For a few moments, we floated in that warmth, on our goalless walk, walking and sensing, just to feel good. Flashbacks of a hundred other walks flooded through me, walks with my mother, children, friends, and lovers, in which we’d slow our pace and fall back into silence as our senses took over: scent of lilac, ok-a-lee trill of red-winged blackbird, rainy mist on closed eyelids. Once again, I’d walked into a wondrous moment. Standing there treading the warmth with my father, I felt alive as my old dog Mu, who for years stopped me on our hillside walks to take in as much as possible – ears perked, nostrils distended – for as long as we could. • What do you notice in this conclusion?