That's all, folks!

Your conclusion should help your readers see why all your research and analysis should matter to them after they put the paper down

Features of a conclusion

• Recap of your thesis
• Synthesis of your main points
• Elaborate on the significance of your findings
• Mention any last notes or important caveats to your research
• Suggest avenues for future research
• Broader impacts

Strategies for Crafting a Conclusion

The "So What" Game

• If you feel like your concluding statements are not saying anything new or interesting, focus on a particular concluding statement and ask yourself: "so what?"

Returning to the Intro

• Brings your paper full circle
• For example, you might return to the same scene or recent event you presented in the intro
• How is the problem that you laid out in the introduction now more comprehensively understood?

Include a provocative insight or quotation from the research or reading you did for your paper.

Propose a course of action or solution

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Avoid the Following

• Beginning with an overused phrase such as “in conclusion,” “in summary,” or “in closing.”
• Introducing a new idea or subtopic in your conclusion
• Including evidence or support that should be in the body of the paper.
• Merely summarizing your thesis and main points rather than synthesizing

"That's all I have to say"

• Restates the thesis and is usually painfully short.
• Does not push ideas forward
• Ex: "These ethnographic narratives have demonstrated that education can be a major force of social change, particularly in generating social action and activism."

"The big reveal"

• The thesis is stated for the first time in the conclusion
• The reader should not have to read your entire paper to find out what it's really about

"We shall overcome"

• This kind of conclusion usually draws on emotion to make its appeal, but while this emotion and even sentimentality may be very heartfelt, it is usually out of character with the rest of an analytical paper
• Example: "Education is our saving grace against ignorance."

"All the things that didn't fit"

• This kind of conclusion includes extra information that the writer found or thought of but couldn’t integrate into the main paper.
• You may find it hard to leave out details that you discovered after hours of research and thought, but adding random information at the end of your paper only creates confusion