- A good introduction should be about 5-10% of the final word count.
- It should introduce your specific assignment, not the whole topic.
- You should use terms from the criteria to show that your work fits in with what you’ve been asked to do, but you shouldn’t just repeat the criteria. You should be more specific about what you are going to cover in your assignment.
- It should frame the subject, setting out the boundaries for your assignment. If you’ve decided to focus on one particular aspect, it’s good to let your lecturer know that in the introduction
- You can put the subject in context, for example by giving definitions. This shows that you understand the topic that you're going to discuss.
- The introduction should explain what you are going to argue, to guide the reader, giving signposts as to what the assignment contains. This means that if your introduction says you’re going to cover points A, B and C, your assignment should talk about them in that order, so that the lecturer knows what to expect.
- Your introduction should be written in a concise way, without repeating terms that have similar meaning such as explore or examine, as this is not a good use of your word count.
Although you can think about your introduction at the planning stage, it’s actually best to write it last, when you’ve finished the rest of the assignment. An introduction needs to provide a kind of 'menu' for the assignment, to say what it contains. You'll find it much easier to write the menu when you've written the assignment. The simplest way to do this is quite directly - by saying 'This assignment will discuss such-and-such a subject' or ‘this essay will examine x and y’. Then you can set out the steps which the assignment takes.
