W 007 F

Introduction

The basis of investigation and research at the Faculty of Humanities is the acquisition of writing and research skills. English major students at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs have the opportunity to attend a course planned to improve these specific skills.

The course requires the students to keep a writing diary, a so called portfolio, in which they collect all the scripts they write during the course. The tutor defines some of the topics, the rest are optional. Besides writing take-home essays, there are regular in-class writing exercises based on reading assignments: the works of Umberto Eco, William Zinsser and the portfolio scripts of other students. To attain research skills students submit a research paper in which they investigate one specific area related to the course.

What drew my attention to conclusions was the fact that this final part of the scripts is the one to hold together the structure of the essay, to present the last thought-provoking ideas, determining the overall impression of the paper on the reader. Nine portfolio scripts constitute the basis of my research on conclusions. I aim to present the contents, structures and methods of writing conclusions.

Method

I analysed the conclusions of these portfolio scripts from eleven aspects. I counted the words of the essays, those of the conclusions and of the last sentences. I defined what parts of speech the first and the last words were, also counting the active and passive verbs, the long concept nouns and the short specific nouns, and indicating the relevance of the contents of the conclusions to the rest of the essays as well. I labelled the data in a chart (see Table 1). To get comparable data I calculated proportions of numbers of specific words to the length of conclusions and the length of conclusions to the length of the essays. According to similarities I grouped the scripts into categories and the drew the conclusions on the basis of possible relations.

Results

According to the length of the essays I grouped the scripts into three categories: the essays which were of a word number of less than 300 made up the first category. Those of a word number of about 400-450 belonged to the second one and the scripts which had more than 800 words belonged to the third one. The essays in the third group tended to have relatively short conclusions (the average proportion of conclusions to the length of the essays was 5.5 %). The essays in the first group had relatively long conclusions (the average proportion was 14.14 % here) and the essays of a length between 400-450 words had the average proportion of 7.7 %, meaning that the length of conclusions were in inverse relation to the length of the essays.
These ratios allowed for creating further categories. I grouped with roughly equal proportion and, examining the data further, I found additional similarities. Essay Nr. 1 and Nr. 7 showed likeness in the use of active verbs and short specific nouns, both occurring with relatively big frequency. The last words in both essays was a noun.

In all but one essays the use of active verbs dominated as opposed to long concept nouns and short specific nouns. It was remarkable that the use of long concept nouns and short specific nouns showed equal proportions, compared to which the use of active verbs was more frequent (except for one work, essay Nr. 7, in which there were balance in the occurrence of the three types of words).

Students did not use passive verbs typically.

In terms of the tendencies in choosing the parts of speech of the first and the last words I noted that four first words out of nine were personal pronouns and seven last words out of nine were nouns.

During the course students were required to read chapters from handbooks that gave guidelines for writing. They were encouraged to apply the tips they found useful in these readings when writing their essays. On the basis of the data I examined the frequency of application of the suggestions in these scripts. “Active verbs push hard, passive verbs tug fitfully” (Zinsser 111). Those essay with high active verb proportion showed dynamics in the flow of the text. Since the ratio of active verbs was bigger than that of long concept nouns, students seemed to have applied the tips effectively. They avoided the use of long concept nouns so that the sentences did not lack people and motion, but became active by the use of verbs. It was not only the verbs that gave more speed to the text, but also the short sentences towards the ending. Four essays had fewer than six words in the last sentence and two had twenty or more words. I also examined the scripts from the point of view of essay organisation. None of the conclusions had no relevance to the topic of the essays, although one seemed to have no logical relation with the rest of the script. One of the writers used quotation in the last paragraph. Four of them came up with new ideas, also four conclusions contained the summaries of the thoughts discussed previously in the course of the essay.

Conclusion

The results of this study show that the structures, contents and methods of writing conclusions reach different levels of complexity and comprehensibility according to the use of long or short sentences, the diction and organisation with relation to the length of the essay. The main findings of my research are the changes in the length of the conclusions according to the length of the essays, the typical use of verbs and nouns and the fact, that in the nine papers I examined it was the last paragraph that the conclusions formed.

In some essays I found the individual meticulous exactness reflecting; therefore, I give some information about the topics these essays were written about. One of the topics chosen by two of the students was assigned by the tutor with the title “My Dictionary”. Two of the scripts were proficiency essays where were numerous options to write about, the rest was free choice of the students. I noticed more endeavour to write a thought-provoking conclusion in the optional essays, where the personal interest of the writers inspired them to express their message with greater subtlety than in the compulsory ones.

This research has widen my view of the opportunities in compiling an essay with firm structure. Since I have investigated the contents of conclusions, I got a detailed insight into the constructing elements of the final parts of the essays. The research has given me an impetus to weigh the significance of the last sentence and its context. It has made me use the proper types of words consciously, and also made me aware of the decisive role of the length of the sentences.
I recommend to read this research paper to English major students, especially to beginner writers. Students wrote the scripts constituting the basis of my research. The results wait for them to be examined.