Completing an Essay Introduction: The Overview Component
Your overview is the final component of your introduction
paragraph. The purpose of your overview is to give the reader an indication of
the steps you will follow to support
your thesis statement. This will list some of the evidence you will use,
the type of studies you’ve done, the most important points of analysis or any
other major items you’ll cover in your essay. After reading your overview, the
reader should have a really clear idea of how you’ll reach your conclusion. If
your thesis statement is your answer to the question that the topic is asking
of you, then your overview will lay out the steps you’ll take to reach that
answer.
You don’t have to list every piece of evidence or every
discussion point in your overview; three to four of the most significant points
will be enough for a standard-length college essay. For a dissertation or
thesis, you should have about two to three paragraphs in your introduction
mapping out the support for your thesis statement.
Try and list your essay overview in one to three sentences.
Remember, this is merely a list of the support, and you won’t have to go into
detail or explain any of it yet. You’re not required to give citations or offer
any actual argumentation in your introduction; that all comes later in your
body paragraphs. There are some resources on exactly how to write body
paragraphs on the Academic Coaching website that can get you started once you
reach that step.
Take a look at the following example which will demonstrate
how to write a context component of your introduction. If you are given the
topic of comparing the depictions of female characters in two superhero films,
your thesis statement could look as follows:
In this essay, I will explain how Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi’s
film Spider-Man is a much more helpless
character than Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh’s film Thor.
Now you have a clear thesis statement, and you know exactly
what you’ll be doing in your essay, namely comparing Mary Jane Watson and Jane
Foster and showing how Mary Jane is a more helpless character.
Your overview will list the evidence which you have for this
point. What are the things in the film that make you think that Mary Jane is
helpless? How do these things compare to Jane Foster? You need to give the reader
an idea of the points you will cover. Your context could look as follows:
In support of this argument, I will demonstrate how Mary Jane is
kidnapped and seems to resign to her fate, how Jane is enterprising and
scientific, and how Thor is shown to be Jane’s equal whereas Mary Jane is
little more than a love interest.
You’ve now shown the reader some of the main points you will
make throughout your essay. When you’ve given context like this, it makes it
much easier to plan your essay. Each of these points could be a separate
paragraph of your essay, and you could then explain each of them in detail
within those paragraphs. (For much more on essay planning, see the guide on
planning an essay at the Academic Coaching
website).
Giving three main points should be enough for your context
section. The three different sections are all part of your introduction
paragraph, and they should be combined to form a complete paragraph. In the
final section of this guide, we’ll look at a few examples of what a complete
introduction will look like, with context, a thesis statement and an overview.
Review Your Learning:
·
An overview is the final part of an introduction
·
The overview gives the main steps you will take
in your essay to support your thesis statement
·
Your overview should be about one to three
sentences for a standard college essay or research paper