TIPS TO WRITE A CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH

Endro Dwi Hatmanto, MA 

The last paragraph in your essay is called the concluding paragraph. This paragraph is very vital in your essay. With your concluding paragraph, you want your readers to leave with a clear understanding of what the point of your essay is. To write a concluding paragraph, follow below tips:

UNDERSTAND THE CONTENTS A 

concluding paragraph contains a summary of the points made in your body of paragraphs, a restatement of the thesis statement, or a final comment on your topic. You may choose one of these ways to end your essay, or you may choose two or three. The option is yours as the writer. A concluding paragraph should never introduce new information about the topic of the essay. New information should go in another body paragraph, not in a concluding paragraph.

WRITE YOUR CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH USING SUMMARY 

One way to end your essay is to summarize the main points in it. Read the following essay about homeless people. Learn the concluding paragraph using summary. Feeling Secure Without Home When you walk downtown in almost any large city, you see many homeless people. They sit on the streets with their shopping carts full of their meager belongings and often ask for money. Do they make you nervous? Do they even scare you? The truth is that most homeless people do no want to be homeless, and they are afraid of the same things that you are. Homeless people, like everyone else, need basically three things to feel safe in their environment. First, and most importantly, homeless people need to feel physical safety. For you and me, this feeling comes when we enter our apartment or house and lock the door behind use. For a homeless person, this feeling is a luxury. They may go to a shelter and forced to roam the streets. For these reasons, a lot of homeless people claim a certain bench of street corner as their own. They are trying to feel physically secure. Second, homeless people need to have a dependable source of food. This is such a basic need that most of us don’t even think about it, but for homeless person, finding food can be a full-time job. There are places to go for meals that are usually run by local governments or churches, but there is not enough food for everyone to have three nutritionally balanced meals a day. Getting one meal a day is considered good for a homeless person. Other food comes from scrounging through garbage or begging on the streets. It is difficult to feel secure in your environment when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from. Finally, to feel safe, you need to know that if you get sick or injure yourself, you can get the medical treatment you need. In our country, this is becoming increasingly difficult even for people who do have places to live but don’t have a lot of money. It is almost impossible for homeless person. It is true that homeless people can usually go to an emergency room in a hospital if they are gravely sick or injured, but some hospitals theses days are turning away anyone who does not have health insurance. If the sickness or injury is not severe, there are some clinics or homeless people, but, again, the need far exceeds the availability. In summary, the need to feel physically safe, the need for a dependable food source, and the need for medical care when necessary are essential for all of us. The constant struggle to obtain these is why homeless people do not feel secure in their environment. (Boardman & Frydenberb, 2002) As you can see, the concluding paragraph in this essay mentions all the main ideas brought out in each of the supporting paragraphs of the essay. When you write a summary as a concluding paragraph, you must make sure that you include all the topics in the body of paragraphs. 

WRITE YOUR CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH USING RESTATEMENT 

An alternative to a summary is a restatement of the idea of your thesis statement of the idea of your thesis statement. Here is another concluding paragraph for the essay on homeless people: In short, all people want to feel safe in their environment, and to do so requires that you have these three things. These are so easy to obtain that most of us take them for granted. However, if you are homeless, getting the basics becomes more difficult and sometimes impossible. 

WRITE YOUR CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH USING FINAL COMMENT 

 Often, a concluding paragraph is most effective when you add a final comment to a summary or a restatement or both. Look at yet another alternative to the original concluding paragraph for the essay on homeless people. In conclusion, the next time you see homeless people, try to look beyond your fear and think about how insecure they must feel in their environment. They may not know where they can go that night to feel safe or what their next meal well be. They may be worried about getting sick, or they may already be sick and have no place to go. For them, life in this world is a day-to-day struggle to survive. 

References: Boardman, C & Frydenberg, J, 2002, Writing to communicate, Longman, New York. [http://pbi.umy.ac.id/tips-to-write-a-concluding-paragaph-in-your-essay/]