CONCLUSION: YOUR “SO WHAT” PARAGRAPH

1. CONCLUSION: YOUR “SO WHAT” PARAGRAPH PURPOSE: To illustrate that you have thought critically and analytically about this issue. Your conclusion should not simply restate your intro paragraph. Your conclusion should tell us why we should care about your paper. What is the significance of your claim? Why is it important to you as the writer or to me as the reader? What information should you or I take away from this? Your conclusion should create a sense of movement to a more complex understanding of the subject of your paper.

2. Your conclusion should serve as the climax of your paper. So, save your strongest analytical points for the end of your essay, and use them to drive your conclusion. WARNING: It's fine to introduce new information or quotations in your conclusions, as long as the new points grow from your argument. New points might be more general, answering the "so what" question; they might be quite specific. Just avoid making new claims that need lots of additional support.

3. To consider: The strongest, most universal way to approach this question is to tie what you have written about to bigger, more universal ideas. Relate what you have written to the universal human experience. For our essay: how does this argument connect to other historical events, issues, or ideas? Recommendations for conclusion: ·Think: "so what?" Why does this argument that Miller made in the 1950s still matter to us today? ·What are the contemporary connections you can make? Are there situations from our current events that are similar? Think about our lesson on contemporary civil liberties violations. ·Have these issues been reflected at other times in US history? When? Why? How did they resolve themselves?

4. The "Wrong Way" to Write an Essay Conclusion In elementary school, most of us were taught to write a conclusion by summarizing what we said in the essay. This is effective at the beginning levels of writing because organizing our thinking in writing is new. Writing conclusions this way gives beginning writers a chance to check the logic of their thinking and provides an easy way for teachers to check for understanding. While effective as a teaching tool, it is not effective writing. In real writing, summarizing in a conclusion is, at best, redundant and boring. At worst it can be insulting for your reader. Summarizing in a conclusion communicates one of two things: 1.)I think my writing was confusing the first time, so I’m going to go over it again. 2.)You (the reader) are not smart enough to remember what I just said, so I’m going to say it again.

5. For Example: As you can see, Abraham Lincoln accomplished many great things during his time as president of the United States. He saw the United States through the Civil War, helping to keep the country from falling apart. Over the course of the war, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all the African Americans in the United States from slavery. When things got tough, he encouraged the citizens and the troops through speeches like “The Gettysburg Address.” And, finally, as both a political leader and a military leader, he led in a way that emphasized wisdom through shared responsibility and discussion. Abraham Lincoln was, without a doubt, one of the greatest presidents of the United States.

6. Concluding the RIGHT Way: The first sentence of your conclusion (or the first paragraph, in the case of long papers) should acknowledge what you have written about in the paper thus far. Essentially, summarize what the essay was about in one sentence.Do not summarize it point by point. The rest of the paragraph should then work to connect the ideas presented thus far to the big ideas of the universal human experience that are more directly relevant to the reader.

7. FOR EXAMPLE: As you can see, Abraham Lincoln accomplished a great many things during his presidency of the United States. Woven through each of his accomplishments, however, was a single theme—the theme of unity. He sought always, through his speeches and his leadership style, to strengthen the sense of unity among those around him. He worked not only for the preservation of a divided country but for the preservation of the divided human spirit. As we struggle today with an increasingly global society, it might serve us well to remember the actions and decisions and life of this simple, humble man. Perhaps we should listen with a new kind of seriousness to those words that he honored not only within his most famous speech, but also by the way he lived his life: that “…all men are created equal.”

8. High School MLA Citation Guide Some initial notes: ·Each scholarly field has its preferred style of guidelines for writing. MLA is widely used in humanities disciplines. Once you understand one style, it is easier to learn other styles for citations. ·When citing the date, list day, then three letter abbreviation for month (except for May, June, and July), then the year. January 28, 2009 is written as 28 Jan. 2009. ·URL, Uniform Resource Locator, is the web address for the source of the information. Do not provide the URL!!! ·Many databases now provide examples of formatting for articles but may not have been updated to reflect new changes in MLA formatting style. THIS IS ALSO TRUE OF SOME WEB-BASED CITATION SERVICES. ·Italics are standard in printed material submitted for grading and editing. ·Provide the medium of publication of source (Example: Print or Web). ·Examples in the document are single spaced to conserve space. All citations in the Works Cited and Works Consulted should be double-spaced; see sample at the end of this guide.

9. Book (5.5.2) Author's Last Name, First Name Middle Name. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher's Name, Year of Publication.Medium of Publication. Example: Ride, Sally. Exploring Our Solar System. New York: Crown, 2003. Print. Article in Magazine (5.4.6) Author’s Last Name, First Name Middle Name. "Title of Article." Name of Magazine Day Abbreviated Month. Year of Publication: Page Numbers of Article. Medium of Publication. Example: Cowen, Ron. “Sky Lights.” Science News 18 Sept. 2004: 179- 180. Print.

10. "Why I Wrote The Crucible: An Artist's Answer to Politics" By Arthur Miller The New Yorker, October 21, 1996 DO NOT include page numbers. Accessed via the WEB. For the article "A Decade of Fear" SEE ARTICLE.

12. Three ways to incorporate a writer’s work into a paper: a. Direct quotes: no changes can be made, quotation marks are used b. Paraphrasing: a complete rewriting in your own words of a passage from a source, shorter in length than the original passage c. Summarizing: the main ideas of a passage put in your own words, significantly shorter but not changing the meaning of the original work Parenthetical Citation: A short reference included in the text of a paper to show the reader the exact source for a quote, a paraphrased or a summarized item. Place the parenthetical citation in parenthesis at the end of the sentence following the borrowed information. Include the first piece of information from the bibliographic citation (often the author’s last name) and page number if available, such as (Brooks 2).

13. Works Cited Brooks, David. “Mind over Muscle.” The New York Times 16 Oct. 2005. ProQuest Online. ProQuest. Web. 14 Nov. 2008. Dickey, Christopher and Nick Summers. “A Female Sensibility; Videogame Makers Have Ignored Half Their Potential Market.” Newsweek 26 Sep. 2008. ProQuest Online Proquest .Web. 7 Nov. 2008. Flowers, Christine. “With No Boys to Ogle, We Had Time to Learn; As Same- Sex Schools Disappear, So Do Students Who Know That Excellence Has No Gender Preference.” Newsweek 24 Oct. 2005. ProQuest Online. Proquest. Web, 14 Nov. 2008.