Your conclusion is your opportunity to distinguish yourself as someone who has engaged with the text and considered it in relation to a broader context. If you answer these questions - I call it my Engaging With Texts Table - you will have views and context before you see the essay question you need to respond to, and you will have something to say. After you have read the text you are studying make some notes in response to these questions.
1. Curiosity: What does this text makes you curious about?
2. Connections: What connections do you draw between the text and your own life and/or other learning?
3. Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue with in the text?
4. Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding onto from the text?
5. Changes: What changes in attributes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?
6. If you were to direct or produce an appropriation of the text, what would be your vision and aims?
Then, when you write your essay, your conclusion can almost write itself. In your essay you have engaged in an academic exercise. So what? What next? How is it relevant to our world today? You can start your conclusion by summing up your argument, restating or amplifying your general statement or governing principle, then add a sentence or two commenting on any aspect of the text that interests you, related to the question, or leading to the next question you would like to explore.
Your marker will be impressed that you have engaged with the text and think more broadly about the value of the module.
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