By K. Tran
“Grab their attention with something snappy or cute.” Is that really it for an intro? According to, The Craft Of Research, there is so much more to do in an introduction if your essay. In order to reel in your audience, you would need a “contextualizing background”, “statement of the problem”, and a “response to the problem”. These are essential to include because your author needs to understand what is leading up to a problem, what is the problem we face, and whether it is going to be addressed or not and how? Otherwise, you would be left with an empty hook.
What the book is missing is something we learned in class, which is called the so what factor. The book covers how the introduction is structured, and how to make it flow nicely. However, at the end of the day, we don’t know why the author’s argument in the introduction is significant or why it matters to the audience. I think this is a struggle many students have, including myself. For example, let’s say, hypothetically speaking, the frog populations across the world are near extinct due to human activities, and a strong argument has been made that we should recuperate the population through a list of great solutions like forest restoration efforts. …But why should we care? The so what could be that an ecological collapse will ensue since frogs are a keystone species, or a country’s major food source will die out since they rely on frogs. This skill, I think, is crucial for students to enhance. If you don’t know why you are arguing for something or how it is important to the readers, why continue arguing?