A Manual For Composing A Research Paper Conclusion
Writing a conclusion can be one of the more difficult parts of a research paper. Often times students have a hard time figuring out how to wrap up their paper well and have a meaningful conclusion. Luckily, there are some simple tips that you can follow to help you compose a great conclusion for your paper:
Don’t introduce any new information
A general rule of thumb for writing conclusions is to not present any new information in it that you didn’t already earlier in the paper. This means that your conclusions should primarily be summarizing points that you’ve already made and providing some perspective on it. If you find yourself wanting to introduce more information or make a new point in your conclusion, simply go back and incorporate it into another section of your paper.
Don’t just summarize, synthesize instead
While the conclusion can mainly summarize points that you’ve already made in the paper, also try to synthesize the information in some new way. This can either be by providing a more in depth perspective of the analysis you’ve done, or by showing why it is important and what larger context it exists in. Simply summarizing, without any synthesis will make your conclusion feel like a waste of time for the reader.
Make it clear why the information you’ve presented is important
A major purpose of a conclusion is to leave your reader with the feeling that the time they just spent reading was worth while and that they learned about something useful and important. Try to use your conclusion to frame why the topic or the research itself is important. Hopefully the analysis that you have already done will show why the topic is interesting, then your conclusion can show why it is important.
Suggest what research still needs to be done
If during the course of writing your paper you came across areas in the literature where there seemed to be incomplete knowledge or understanding, and you think that more research may be needed to be able to offer a more complete topic of the picture, the conclusion of your paper is a good place to point out where more studies should be done. In addition to pointing out these areas you should make it clear why it is needed or what it would accomplish. For instance, you could say that more research in this area will allow for better understanding of this aspect of the topic.