How can you write a strong conclusion for an academic paper?

2 Use linguistic cues and transitions

In order to write a coherent and cohesive conclusion, you must employ linguistic cues and transitions to guide your readers through your final remarks. These words and phrases indicate the structure, function, and relationship of sentences and paragraphs. For instance, you can use summarizers to recap your main points, such as "In summary", "To conclude", or "In a nutshell". Evaluators can be used to comment on the importance or value of your research, such as "This study demonstrates", "This paper contributes", or "This analysis reveals". Limiters acknowledge the shortcomings or scope of your research, such as "However", "Nevertheless", or "Despite these limitations". Projectors indicate the potential or possibilities of your research, such as "Future research could", "Further studies should", or "This paper opens up new avenues for". Implicators suggest the practical or theoretical implications of your research, such as "This implies", "This suggests", or "This means that".

4 Avoid common pitfalls

When writing a conclusion, there are several pitfalls to avoid. These include introducing new information that is not supported by your paper, repeating your introduction or body paragraphs without adding any new insights, making unfounded claims, ending abruptly or vaguely, and apologizing for or undermining your research or writing. To write a successful conclusion, it’s important to provide a clear and satisfying conclusion that ties everything together.

5 Adapt to different types of papers

Depending on the type and purpose of your paper, you may need to adapt your conclusion to suit the specific features and conventions of your genre. For example, if you are writing a literature review, you may want to focus on synthesizing the main themes, gaps, and debates in the existing literature, and identifying the research questions or hypotheses that emerge from your review. If you are writing an empirical study, you may want to emphasize the main findings, implications, and limitations of your data analysis, and suggest how your study can inform or improve practice or policy. If you are writing a theoretical analysis, you may want to highlight the main insights, arguments, and implications of your conceptual framework, and discuss how your analysis can advance or challenge existing theories or paradigms.

6 Review and revise your conclusion

Finally, after you have written your first draft of your conclusion, you should review and revise it to ensure it is clear, concise, and coherent. See if it summarizes your main argument and findings, highlights the significance of your research, addresses the limitations and gaps of your study, suggests directions for future research or practice, provides recommendations or implications for policy, theory, or action, uses linguistic cues and transitions to guide your readers, refers back to your introduction, avoids introducing new information or arguments, repeating your introduction or body paragraphs, making sweeping generalizations or claims, ending abruptly or vaguely, or apologizing for or undermining your research or writing. Additionally, make sure it adapts to the type and purpose of your paper.