Lesson video

I'm Mrs. Crompton, and welcome to today's English lesson.

Our focus today is writing an effective conclusion.

You will need a pen and paper, as well as your introduction and main body of your viewpoint essay.

Take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away, and have everything you need to hand.

Okay, so by the end of today's session, we will need to judge our final piece of writing against the following criteria.

We will be making sure that the organisation is absolutely secure.

One of the jobs today is to make sure that everything is linked and developed fully in a convincing and engaging way for our reader.

We're going to make sure that our vocabulary choices are precise and also, consistently sustained throughout the piece.

And we're also going to really concentrate on making sure that our sentence constructions are very deliberate too, and that we're using them as part of conveying our message.

You will have your plan by your side as well.

And when it comes to the final part of today's session, we're going to review where your essay has ended up, and judge how close to this initial planet has been.

Now, if it's moved away, that's not a problem because I have encouraged you to alter and adapt as we worked through each lesson.

But what's really important then is that you make little notes on your original plan, so that next time you come to doing some viewpoint writing, you start to incorporate those ideas from the outset.

Okay, so the focus for today is to really concentrate on our conclusion.

And you can see at bullet.

3, that for the end of our essay, we have said, we're going to appeal to big picture ideas, and what we're going to do is to test our readers' trustworthiness and their moral stance.

So the idea here is that we're almost saying, "What's important to you then?" We're really pushing them for an answer to evaluate themselves and think about whether what we've said is going to ring true on whether they can see the credibility of our line of argument by questioning their own moral stance.

So that's what we're aiming to as a technique.

And what we're going to do to start with is just to go back to the model answer one more time.

What I would like you to do is to take control of the screen from this point, and in a moment, you are going to see one slide, and on that slide in a colour coding, you will see the introduction and the conclusion with portions of both that I want you to compare against each other.

I'll show you very quickly.

You've got the yellow on the yellow, the pink on the pink, and then the two bits in purple.

I would like you to compare and contrast, And while looking at the links between the two, what similarities, differences, what links have we got in terms of content of specific words and phrases? And also, thinking about the idea of logos, pathos, ethos.

Are we seeing any signs of those within the two paragraphs? Okay? So it's over to you for some initial reflection on the introduction and conclusion, and how they are functioning together.

And welcome back.

So I hope you can say that there is definitely an understanding on the part of this writer, that these two elements are linked, and that they almost mimic one another in terms of structure.

So you can see the premise of the whole argument in a role model should be someone to look up to.

That's basically the viewpoint that is going to be argued throughout the essay.

And then, in the final conclusion, we have got the clarification of that viewpoint in the idea that people who actually save someone else's life, they're the people who are genuine role models because they contribute in a way that is worthy of credits and is worthy of our respect.

We've got the bits in pink where the precision of the vocabulary is the thing that's driving the idea.

So we've got the rhetorical device of listing use, goodness, compassion, love, and strength, that it's also quite emotive.

And then, we've got that emphasised, and we can see an amplification of the technique in the final paragraph.

No sparkles or plastic, just simple grit.

And we've got that really nice phrasing, no sparkles or plastic, just simple grit.

We've got an antithesis created that determination and overwhelming compassion for other people with a deliberate picking up of the word compassion.

Compassion seems to be a fundamental quality for this person within that essay about what it is that they're looking for in a role model, somebody who can actually share compassion for others.

And then finally, we've got this technique of direct address.

And I think this is, perhaps, the weakest part of the answer, I think more could be done with that, it's quite simple.

I also think with that idea in mind, the ethos, the testing of the moral stance of your reader could be stronger within this particular introduction and conclusion.

So I think that is an area that we could say is something that we could improve upon in our own conclusion.

Okay.

Let's move on from here.

So we've got some ideas in our mind.

And what we're going to look at is the idea of Kairos, the idea of matching and having it be appropriate, internal and purpose as we look at an appropriate draught conclusion to the following.

So look at the introduction, draught an appropriate conclusion, and remember to try an appeal to ethos in your version as you draught conclusion to this introduction.

So this was the draught paragraph introduction.

What I would like you to do is to stylistically match this in your own version of a conclusion.

Okay? So you've got the whole of the introduction there with the little bit that goes into the second phase.

And I would like you to write the conclusion, with Kairos in mind.

And welcome back.

So now, it is over to you, we've had a look at a sample while we've compared introduction and conclusion.

You've then had a look at matching a conclusion to an existing introduction, but within a different style and tone.

And now, what I want you to do is to think about your own response.

Your main target is to try and consider ethos as the absolute fundamental to include within the final paragraph.

And there is an instruction here to reread the whole of your response before you put pen to paper for this conclusion.

Within the conclusion, there is also some guidance here about trying to use some or all of these features, using antithesis, using direct address, or using listing in threes in order to test your readers' moral stance.

Okay? That's your final task, it's over to you.

And while come back.

So as we come into the very, very final stage now, you have a full response.

And what I would like us to do is to, so switch tack a little bit, and I now want you to do a final critique.

It is finished, however, we've got the whole task in front of us now, it's been said that people who save lives or help improve the lives of others are the true role models of today.

Write an article for a magazine in which you argue your view about what makes a good role model.

So you've got your full response.

And as we come to the final stage, in order to assess this response, I'm not going to give you a model to judge it against, but I am going to remind you of our assessment criteria.

And I am going to ask you to do one final piece of annotating or writing.

So there's going to be a little bit of a difference here.

As you go through, I would like you to annotate your work, and I want you to pick out where you have included logos, pathos and ethos, throughout the whole response.

It would be quite nice, actually, if you have got any different coloured pens to maybe colour code that so you can see it very strikingly.

And it might be that you get to the end and think, "Do you know what? I'm not really good at including X." You know, the logos is all crammed in one paragraph, and then it doesn't seem very even, or it might be that your ethos was weaker.

That's some really nice techniques.

So you're analysing and annotating.

I want you to notice and recognise and label where you have used particular rhetorical devices.

So you can see here, I'm switching your role, you are now becoming someone who's analysing their own work.

So you're turning the lens on yourself.

And I want you to judge your piece of writing as though it was one of our unseen fiction texts.

Okay? So you're going to then look at the devices, and label and annotate them as we would if we were looking at somebody else.

And then finally, I want you to assess how well you have linked to your ideas.

Can you feel the argument building? Is there anywhere where it jars a little bit? And it could be now that you're picking out areas that need to be improved.

And in terms of writing a commentary, it doesn't have to be a lengthy process, but I think it would be useful for you to track what happens throughout your response.

The introduction works well because paragraph one works well because it links paragraph two, and use these prompts to help write yourself a commentary of the things that you have been successful with in the areas that you still can see could do with further development.

So you're working through your whole plan, making the adjustments accordingly.

Okay.

So I'll take you right back.

This final task then is for you to self critique, annotate, and write yourself a commentary.

These things have gone well, the introduction flows really well into X.

The middle part, there's a real sense of empathy there, and that's really effective because I used Y.

And then working right away through to the conclusion, but acknowledging anything that needs improving.

Okay? So it's over to you on final critical read through.

And welcome back.

I hope you found that final exercise useful.

I think it will be quite interesting actually if you repeated it again, maybe not today, but left it for 24 hours and read your piece of work, or even gave it to somebody else to read.

And just to get that feedback about the fluency and the clarity of your viewpoint is really quite important at this stage while you're developing your own viewpoint writing and your own voice within these pieces.

All that remains for me to say is thank you for your focus today.

I hope that the techniques are going to be something that you can continue into your writing in the future.