hi everyone welcome back I'm Jenna and this is learn academic English on this channel I teach intermediate and advanced level lessons for English Learners who want to take their language to the next level one of the things that I do in my job as an English teacher is help people learn how to write essays especially essays that are for college or university level classes here in the United States and one of the things that people need to learn is how to write a good introduction so in today's video I'm going to teach you a basic
formula for how to write a good introduction paragraph for an essay and I will show you a couple of examples at the end of the video so that you can see exactly what I mean by each of the things I show you in this lesson and please don't forget to give this video a like leave a comment and subscribe if you find this video helpful and note that if you want more practice and personalized feedback from me I offer memberships here on my YouTube channel so first let's talk briefly about introduction paragraphs the introduction for
an essay should introduce the reader to the topic and tell the reader exactly what your essay is going to discuss an introduction is usually about half a page long it depends on the length of your essay a longer essay might have a slightly longer introduction but in general you should aim for half a page the formula that I'm going to show you today works for almost all types of essays in English if you need to write an essay in class under the pressure of time if you need to write an argumentative essay or an essay
that compares and contrasts two things this type of introduction should work great if you've learned about introductions before you have probably seen this triangle that shows you that an introduction paragraph starts in a very general way and then gets more specific what this means is that at the beginning of the introduction you're going to talk about the topic in a very general way you might start to just hint at the topic you're going to be talking about big ideas or vague ideas but then as the introduction moves along you're going to start to get into
the topic more and more until finally the end is going to be your thesis statement and your thesis statement is where you're going to start to focus in on exactly what your essay is going to talk about so the first part of this General to specific idea is the hook the hook is the first part of your introduction and it's usually one to two sentences sometimes it can be a little bit longer and I have a whole video about hooks that you can watch I'll link it above but basically a hook is a part of
your introduction that catches the reader's attention that's why it's called a hook it hooks the reader and there are different types of hooks but some of the more common and most effective ones are an interesting question that gets the reader thinking a statistic and usually this is something kind of shocking a story or an interesting quote so depending on how much time you have and on the topic that you're writing about you can choose which type of hook you think would be the most effective for your introduction or you can try a different type then
you're going to transition into the next section of your introduction which is going to be a little bit longer and that's the background or connecting information what does this section do well this section answers two questions first why is this topic important this is basically like a who cares section you need to tell your reader why the topic is important so that your reader will want to continue reading and second what information do we need that's what we mean by background what important information about the topic do we need to feel comfortable and continue reading
and we'll look at some examples of this in just a moment and then third the thesis statement and as you probably know the thesis statement is the most important sentence in your essay because it tells exactly what your essay is going to discuss a good thesis statement should have these two parts it tells the topic of your essay and the controlling idea for example if you write an essay about homelessness what are you going to talk about so homelessness would be the topic the controlling idea could be the causes of homelessness or solutions to homelessness
or you might do an argumentative essay in which you want to show why one solution is the best so that's what it means here by controlling idea what exactly do you want to say about the topic and then an optional part of your thesis statement but a very useful one is to include your key points and what does this mean this means show the reader what your essay is going to discuss in those next paragraphs for example if you're writing an essay about homelessness you might say that homelessness has three main causes okay so let's
stop there for a moment the topic is homelessness what is the controlling idea the causes where does homelessness come from what is it caused by what are the reasons for homelessness okay then you can stop there and the reader will then find out what those causes are when they read the essay or you can include the key points so that means that we're going to show what those causes are in a short way and then in the essay we will read more about them for example homelessness has three main causes High housing prices mental illness
and the breakdown of the family okay so now we know what the three causes are but we don't know any details about them we're going to read about them in the body of the essay so you can see how the key points are useful because they tell the reader what to expect in the essay it helps to make your essay more clear now let's go back here for a moment and let's think about that same topic of homelessness and let's think about how we might do the background or connecting information for that introduction again we're
thinking why is this topic important well we might give some statistics about how many people are homeless we might show that homelessness is increasing and for that reason we need to know more about it and what other background information or general information do we need well we might give a definition of what homelessness is we might suggest that it is a very significant problem and then give some statistics to show why so for this section you want to think that your reader knows nothing about the topic what does your reader need to feel comfortable and
interested and to continue reading your essay finally don't forget that it's important for your writing to flow well and so that means that from each section of the introduction you need to make sure that there's a transition or some kind of flow from one part to the next and I'll show you an example of that in just a moment one word of caution though an introduction is important why well first of all it sets up the reader for the essay and it's the first part of your essay that the reader reads but the body of
your essay is the place where you discuss your argument and that really should be more important and so you want to be careful because if you don't have a lot of time to write your essay you're going to try to get your introduction done pretty quickly and then focus on the body of your essay that's why it's so important to know this formula and to practice it so that you can write your introduction quickly and then Focus most of your time on the body of your essay I have seen many times that my students spend
too much time focusing on just getting the perfect introduction and then they don't have enough time to fully develop the body of their essay and that's a mistake because the body of the essay is where you prove your idea to the reader or you discuss your ideas in depth and that really is the most important part okay so now that we know the three parts of an introduction let's look at a couple of examples so now that we know how to write an introduction let's look at a few examples the first one is actually adapted
from an essay example that I found in a textbook quite a while ago and I'll leave a link to that book Below in case you want to check it out more a young woman in South Korea might date 10 men before choosing one to be her husband her mother might shake her head in disbelief but her grandmother would be shocked by this in the past marriages were arranged by the family and a young woman had almost no voice in who her future husband would be once married she simply accepted her role as caretaker for her
husband and children and did not expect that her personal interests would be recognized this attitude toward marriage is changing in Asia as women look for ways to pursue their dreams and Men support women's needs for personal fulfillment there are three main reasons women's expectations of marriage are higher than before in many Asian countries a desire for personal fulfillment increased Independence and a modern view of choosing a spouse okay so this introduction has the three parts so first we can see the hook the hook is um sort of a hypothetical story it's a very short story
and you can see that it's hypothetical because it has these modal verbs might and would um it's an imaginary story in other words okay then it transitions into the background information and the background information is this whole section which as I mentioned before the background should be the largest section of the introduction and what does the background section do here it tells us what we need to know to feel comfortable with the topic it gives us background it tells us what is this issue in this culture and it tells us what marriage was like in
the past and that it is changing now so it just gives us a little bit of background information to help us feel comfortable with the topic in addition it also shows why the topic is important who cares well the topic is important because marriage is changing in Asia okay and this is in the present right it's changing in Asia now okay finally we have the thesis statement and notice that the topic is that women's expectations of marriage are higher and the controlling idea is what are the reasons finally we have our three key points and
those are three reasons a desire for personal fulfillment increased Independence and a modern view of choosing a spouse okay the other thing I want to mention here is that remember that it's very important for the flow of the writing to be nice and you can see that the writer made a transition from the hook to the background by linking the story to the Past so this in the past here provides a little transition from the hook to the background let's move on and look at the second introduction at a party are you an outgoing person
or a shy quiet type if you consider yourself shy You Are Not Alone shyness is a universal characteristic found in all ages and cultures according to recent research almost 50 percent of people say that they experience some feelings of shyness in their lives okay this person's name here this last name this is the citation this shows what the source of This research was it's probably an article written by someone with the last name Payne shyness refers to strong self-conscious and anxious feelings during social interactions these feelings can result in increased heart rate negative thoughts and
avoiding social situations since shyness is so common and has negative impacts on people it is not surprising that psychologists are striving to learn more about its causes they have found that shyness can result from both biological and environmental factors okay let's look at the parts of the introduction the first part is the hook and the hook is just an interesting question in this case the question is not so interesting but because it's related to it's asking you so to the reader it makes the reader stop and think am I am I outgoing or am I
shy at parties okay then we transition into the background and how do we transition into the background because if you consider yourself shy You Are Not Alone okay so this shows us that if you answer that you are a shy person you are not alone many people are shy then shyness is a universal characteristic found in all ages and cultures see how the writing is Flowing nicely okay then what's this this is a statistic that shows us why the topic is important who cares well the reason that we should care is that almost 50 percent
of people experience shyness in their lives this means that this is a very common problem next what do we have here we have a definition what is shyness this is background information that helps the reader to understand the topic better okay next we have since shyness is so common so that's referring back to this statistic and has negative impacts on people it is not surprising that psychologists are striving to learn more about its causes see the flow of ideas here the first part of the sentence refers back to these ideas in the background and then
the next one refers to the thesis statement they who is they psychologists they have found that shyness can result from both biological and environmental causes okay what's the topic shyness what's the controlling idea the where it comes from what are the causes it can result from so that's talking about causes and we have key points here biological Environmental okay let's look at the last one people living without a house are like babies living without their mothers if babies need to have their mother by their side to make them feel secure homeless people also need shelter
to make them feel secure to work and earn money to improve their lives therefore nobody wants to become homeless there are numerous reasons that make people become homeless divorce mental illness drug addiction poverty and the housing shortage are significant causes of homelessness across the United States and in the country's most populous state California according to the article California's homelessness crisis in 2020 the number of homeless in California was 161 158 and the number of homeless is increasing all across the state in Sacramento it increased by 67 percent this enormous statistic shows that the Sacramento government
needs to wake up and do something right away to solve this problem the city of Sacramento should offer free housing to the homeless for the following reasons to improve the environment be humanitarian and save people's lives okay first I want to mention that this introduction was written by a student of mine in my writing class last semester and just reading it again I feel so proud of her that she was able to write such an excellent introduction notice that the hook is a metaphor in this case it's a simile because it includes the word like
and this is another type of hook that we can do where we compare two things so people living without a house are like babies living without their mothers okay that's not quite enough information we need to know why in the next sentence she shows why okay then she starts to transition into the background information nobody wants to become homeless okay so why do they become homeless then she talks about the reasons and this information here is the background information that shows us why the topic is important who cares right and gives us some background to
help us feel comfortable with the topic to know a little bit about the topic so she tells us what are the causes and then she starts to get more specific by mentioning that she's talking about California then she gives a statistic here this right here is the source of the information the name of the article where she got the statistic and she tells us that the number of homeless people was this and it's increasing and then she gets even more specific by talking about a city in California and how the number increased by 67 percent
okay so this tells us why is the topic important it's important because it's a big problem and it's getting worse okay then she has this sentence that helps us move into the thesis this enormous statistic shows that the government needs to do something then we have the thesis statement and the thesis statement is for an argumentative essay she's going to try to persuade us that the city of Sacramento should give free housing to the homeless why she has her three key points here there are three reasons as you can see all three of these introductions
have those three parts a hook to catch the reader's attention and the hook is usually one to two maybe three sentences then we transition into the background the background tells us why the topic is important nowadays that often includes statistics to show that it's a big number so we should be aware of it and it gives us a little bit of general information about the topic to help us understand the topic a little bit what is shyness what's the problem with homelessness okay and then we start to get more specific and transition into the thesis
statement and in the thesis statement that's one sentence usually that tells us what the topic of the essay is what the controlling idea is what are we going to say about that topic and optionally the key points which shows us what the parts of the essay will be okay and the key points are optional but they are very helpful because they help to make your writing more clear found this lesson about introductions helpful if you have questions please let me know below and notice that there is a link to a handout that you can use
to learn this at home I hope to see you back here again soon take care
