Sample Concluding Paragraphs

SAMPLE CONCLUDING PARAGRAPHS

1st Concluding paragraph with summary of positions.

Advocates for inclusion use many phrases to elicit our support; for example, they say: children will learn to socially accept handicapped people; students will become more sensitive; and students will “open new dimensions of caring within themselves” (Jost 1138) . This is all great and I think accepting all people with their individual differences is very important to our society; however, academics must play the primary role in educating our students. We cannot have a nation of socially sensitive people who cannot read and do basic math. I do not want our society to go back to placing special education students in isolated facilities surrounded by cyclone fencing. I believe all students have the right to the best quality education possible, and therein lies the key. All students deserve to be considered before total inclusion is implemented on a nationwide basis. Anything less is unfair to both groups of students.

(This concluding paragraph again refers to the essay on inclusion. In this paragraph the writer summarizes her information in light of the evidence given throughout the paper and clearly answers the question posed in the second paragraph of the introduction, thus concluding the paper.)

9. 2nd Concluding paragraph with analogies.

Tobacco products are the number one preventable killer in America and the world. If two giant jumbo airliner jets filled to maximum capacity crashed and killed 1,200 passengers in our country each day, the nation would be in an outrage. On a world wide scale an even grimmer note, 14 of these planes would crash each day killing 8,219 to reflect the total number of tobacco- related deaths—an average of 5.7 individuals every minute. This is an outrage and it should be stopped. If suicide and homicide are against the law, why isn’t tobacco?

(The paper on smoking ends on a rather effective analogy regarding smoking and loss of life. The jumbo jet analogy serves two purposes: (1) throughout the paper the writer cited many numbing statistics and by using the analogy removed the statistics from the abstract and made them more immediate and concrete; (2) it is a rather attention getting conclusion to perhaps get the reader to pause and think about the problem. )

10. 3rd Concluding paragraph with w/ restatement of THESIS.

The North American Free Trade Agreement will continue to give rich multinational corporations the right to exploit citizens from both sides of the border. It will continue to allow those same corporations to pollute the environment in ways that would never be tolerated in the States. Additionally, American consumers will continue to lose as low-grade agricultural products that do not meet minimum American Food and Drug standards are brought into our markets. Finally, both Americans and Mexicans will lose as living standards continue to drop on both side of the border. As we have seen, the American public has been put in their place and American corporations, along with their friends in the White House, continue to pad their pockets at the cost of human rights and human welfare.

(The paper on NAFTA concludes with a restatement of the THESIS in light of the evidence developed throughout the course of the paper. This is effective for controversial subjects or, again, when making a claim and showing evidence to support that claim. Think of a lawyer giving a final argument.)