Writing an Introduction (Method 1)

By Professor Karen Bowes and Shu Chan

There are various methods students should learn from journalists to attract the reader from the start. If a journalist wants her article to sell, she needs to interest the reader at the beginning. As a student, you should also aim to captivate the reader, your professor, as early as the introduction especially when she has to read too many student essays. Many of them are most likely to be boring and you want to make sure your essay is not one of them. You want to make sure your essay rejuvenates your reader (or at least stimulate her interest) instead of sedate her. Here is one method to attract the reader from the start, or in your introduction.


Method 1: Use of Statistics/Unknown Information to Attract the Reader

Example from “Victims of Vanity” by Lynda Dickinson

Lipstick, face cream, anti-perspirant, laundry detergent… these products and hundreds of other personal care and household items have one common ingredient: the suffering and death of millions of animals. An average of 25 million animals die every year in North America for the testing of everything from new cosmetics to new methods of warfare. Five hundred thousand to one million of these animals are sacrificed to test new cosmetics alone. Of all the pain and suffering caused by animal research, cosmetic and household product testing is among the least justifiable, as it cannot even be argued that these tests are done to improve the quality of human life.