The last part of your essay often proves the most tedious. Having invested a substantial amount of time collecting sources, conducting experiments, and putting together a coherent discussion, you may feel drained to commit your focus to prepare the conclusion chapter.
Also, transitioning from specific arguments to a general summary of your research can prove challenging. This article will guide you on how to conclude a thesis, helping you give the reader a clear understanding of the main findings and also to highlight the answer to your research question.
What is the goal of a conclusion?
The conclusion of a thesis is made up of broad statements of the major insights from your research. This section is thus aimed to summarize the findings for your research questions and to draw recommendations for subsequent research, ensuring that you address various gaps in your paper.
The conclusion also serves to demonstrate the new knowledge you have added to a field, helping the reader make out the key findings of your research.
Elements of a conclusion
The conclusion, like other chapters in a paper, is divided into multiple parts including the introduction, the thesis statement, your main findings, the recommendations, and limitations. The introduction should transition from the discussion, helping the reader to understand that you are summarizing your paper.
The thesis statement helps you to bring back the main objectives into focus, clarifying your findings without the clutter of information contained within your discussion section. Recommendations are also a crucial part of the thesis conclusion as they acknowledge the limitations of your research, recommending how various research gaps from your study can be addressed in subsequent research.
How long should your conclusion be?
The conclusion of a thesis makes up between 5% and 10% of the total word count. this word count allows you to summarize your paper without over-dwelling on arguments that were previously exhausted in the body of your dissertation.
It is worth noting that your dissertation should be free of new information as this could cause confusion for your reader or render your paper incomplete.
How to write a thesis conclusion
Here, we’ll highlight some steps on how to end a thesis, helping you to easily conclude your paper and overcome the common stumbling blocks for students.
- Answer the main research question
Before you write your conclusion, highlight what you intended to achieve in your research and the key findings relating to your hypothesis. This will give you a scope of your key ideas, ensuring the relevance of your conclusion to the paper.
- Make recommendations for the future
After clarifying your key argument, check the limitations of your research and analyse the gaps in your paper. from these, recommend the improvements and alternative research approaches that would yield better results.
This will overcome various counterarguments and guide the reader to make improvements on the research topic.
- Challenge various counterarguments
Before completing your paper, tackle the key counterargument in your topic, allowing the reader to see your stance regarding the topic. this overcomes any conflicts of ideologies, also helping you defend your paper from the obvious criticism from already existing work.
- Highlight your contributions
Finally, outline the contributions you made in your field, helping the reader to summarize your work without the influence of various ideas in your discussion.
How to restate your thesis in the conclusion
It is crucial to restate your thesis to reintroduce a central argument in your paper and also to transition smoothly to your summary. However, repeating the thesis stamen verbatim may result in redundancy, compromising your reader’s interest.
Therefore, consider restating your thesis to highlight your key argument without resorting to the overused transition statements such as; in conclusion, as I conclude, and lastly.
Some of the tips for restating your thesis include:
- Reread your original thesis statement to make out the main keywords and highlight the main points on which your research is based.
- Paraphrase your thesis either by altering the structure of your sentence or changing tenses and shortening/ lengthening your thesis statement.
Final take
We hope that these tips come in handy to help you write a quality conclusion. If you are still facing challenges with your paper, consider seeking expert help from our team to improve your writing skills and to ensure the quality of your essay without exceeding the due date.
We highly recommend that you check a thesis conclusion example to better acquaint yourself with the process of writing an essay and to seek a dissertation rubric to identify the requirements for your conclusion chapter.
