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Writing Introductions for Expository Essays
1.
Use a brief but descriptive anecdote. This strategy gets readers emotionally
involved
FOR EXAMPLE:
For twenty-seven years, Mao Zedong’s corpse has rested peacefully in a
mausoleum in the center of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, disturbed only by
tourists and city residents who have passed by to pay their respects to the
first leader of communist China. But now a group of prominent Chinese
intellectuals wants the government to finally bury him – along with many
of his ideas.
2.
Create an interesting, attention grabbing scenario (an imaginative projection
of the future, or some hypothetical moment you want to create to make a
point).
FOR EXAMPLE:
Imagine a snowstorm close to the summit of a 6100-meter peak in the
Andes. On the descent, your climbing partner slips in treacherous conditions. His
leg is badly broken. For hours you struggle to winch him down the mountainside.
The cold is unbearable, and you must battle fatigue and dehydration. Then
disaster strikes afresh: tethered to the rope, your friend slips over an unseen
cliff. The sound of his cries is lost in the blizzard. As he dangles below, you
cannot know whether he is alive or dead, but his weight is pulling you inexorably
to the edge. Without prompt action, you will die. Do you cut the rope?
3.
Present a startling statistic – shock readers out of their ho-hum complacency.
It's up to the writer to make readers care!
FOR EXAMPLE:
Four billion people will be diagnosed with HIV this year. As if this number
weren't staggering enough, consider this. In any given college classroom,
statistically one in every four students will be diagnosed with HIV.
4.
Begin with a meaningful, colorful, or famous quotation-it establishes your
credibility and sometimes challenges your readers
FOR EXAMPLE:
Time stands still for no man. Time takes its toll.
Time is of the essence. During a recent visit to
Burma’s Shan state, the heart of the infamous
Golden Triangle, I thought often of those
commonplace English expressions – partly
because almost none of the clocks told the
correct time.
ngsn/lilychai/S3EF/expository/introduction/handout
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5.
Ask a question-involve the reader immediately.
FROM "Obedience" in ADBUSTERS (No.29, Spring 2000)
Are today's young women and men more skeptical of authority
than their parents were and more inclined to rebel against
conformity? The question arose recently in an undergraduate
philosophy class in Freedom and Responsibility I was teaching at
the University of Toronto. We had just watched the tapes of the
infamous Stanley Milgram obedience experiments from the early
1960s, which were designed to test the moral malleability of other
wise upstanding citizens in the face of coercive, patriarchal
authority of Science. Milgram himself was shocked by the result:
over 50 percent of the residents of New Haven, Connecticut,
appeared willing to electroshock a fellow citizen into
unconsciousness, perhaps even death, simply because a man in a
white coat told them to. …
6.
Give your readers background information they may need. Provide a context for
your discussion by establishing a frame of reference.
FOR EXAMPLE:
When ENRON launched an era of scandal in 2002, Old Europe had a good
sneer about the ugly excesses of American capitalism. Now Europe has a
scandal as large as any uncovered in the United States. 8-14 billion have
gone missing at Parmalat, a global dairy conglomerate based in the
northern Italian city of Parma. CEO Calisto Tanzi is now in a Milan jail along
with a dozen other executives.
7.
Come up with your own creative "hook."
FOR EXAMPLE:
The recent murder-suicides at Columbine High School have shocked the
nation and left us wondering why someone, somewhere along the line had
not seen the evil afoot and taken steps to stop it. The question has been
directed particularly to the perpetrators' parents. The signs were thereexploding pipe bombs in the garage, a sawed-off shotgun barrel on a
dresser, neo-Nazi messages left on the computer-yet on parent
intervened. A possible explanation for such inaction may be found in an
examination of the dysfunctional family relationships in Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman. Instead of directly addressing an obvious problem,
family members choose to play into a fantasy, a fantasy that culminates in
suicide.
The meaning of “No!”…
ngsn/lilychai/S3EF/expository/introduction/handout