hanz Posted February 12, 2010 Report Share Posted February 12, 2010 I am ready to submit my final draft of the WL essay, but my teacher keeps telling me my conclusion is weak! i keep fixing it until i have reached now with a good one but it ends with a question! my question is that can i end an essay especially the WL essay of English AL with a question? is it acceptable?Thanks Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandwich Posted February 12, 2010 Report Share Posted February 12, 2010 Some people say you can, some people say you can't. Personally I don't think a "question for next time" or "something to think about further" is a good way to conclude. It's redundant, doesn't add anything at all to your essay, and reduces the finality of your actual conclusion.The best conclusions are short, sweet and to the point. Look at your original WL question and then look at your argument thus far. Your conclusion should summarise the lines of your argument and the main points you made in that argument (even if it's only in list form) and then use those to satisfactorially demonstrate how your argument has answered the question. With WL the question is usually a "to what extent" or something along those lines, so you will want to have a final line perhaps giving a small opinion as to which text you think contributed to a greater extent, or showed a theme to a greater extent, or just what the main point of comparison and contrast between the texts is to show how your arguments added up. That's a solid, trustworthy conclusion, and it's extremely hard to be let down by one of these buggers Sticking a question in the end just potentially suggests you may not have brilliant concluding skills, or that you didn't really argue the points out well enough to answer your question -- and even if you manage to put it in correctly and get a meaningful question in there, it doesn't add anything to the essay (which is an entity in itself for the IB, not part of a body of analysis work xP). Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetnsimple786 Posted February 12, 2010 Report Share Posted February 12, 2010 Some people say you can, some people say you can't. Personally I don't think a "question for next time" or "something to think about further" is a good way to conclude. It's redundant, doesn't add anything at all to your essay, and reduces the finality of your actual conclusion.Hmm that's interesting...Once I entered Pre-IB, my English teachers always told me the importance of a "So What?" in the conclusion. To get a good mark from them, I write a couple of sentences concluding my paper and then relate it to why the paper is important to the readers. So what? I either end with a question or an implied one. It can act as an impetus for self-inspection and critical analysis from something literary to something outside of it. In TOK, I'm starting to consciously realize the importance of literature as an area of knowledge. It gives us insight into ourselves, our past, and our future, as cornily as I've worded that. Anyways, I wanted to present a different view of the question thing. Ask your teacher if a question is acceptable or not. =) Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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