Perhaps you will think of a good beginning and conclusion only after you have written the body of your paper. The head and tail of your paper might simply make clear your answer to your initial question. But that is not the only way to begin and end a research paper.
Build to Your Finish. You might start out slowly with a clear account of an event to draw your readers into the paper. You could then build up to a strong finish, saving your strongest argument for the end — after you have presented the evidence to support your thesis. Suppose your paper argues that American children are harmed by the national obsession with sports:
See more strategies for opening and concluding.
See more on transitions.
Sum Up the Findings of Others. Another way to begin a research paper is to summarize the work of other scholars. One research biologist, Edgar F. Warner, has reduced this time-tested opening to a formula.
First, in one or two paragraphs, you review everything that has been said about your topic, naming the most prominent earlier commentators. Next you declare why all of them are wrong. Then you set forth your own claim, and you spend the rest of your paper supporting it.
That pattern may seem cut and dried, but it is useful because it places your research and ideas into a historical and conceptual framework. If you browse in specialized journals, you may be surprised to see how many articles begin this way. Of course, one or two other writers may be enough to argue with. For example, a student writing on the American poet Charles Olson starts her research paper by disputing two views of him.
To Cid Corman, Charles Olson of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is “the one dynamic and original epic poet twentieth-century America has produced” (116). To Allen Tate, Olson is “a loquacious charlatan” (McFinnery 92). The truth lies between these two extremes, nearer to Corman’s view.
Whether or not you fully stated your view at the beginning, you will certainly need to make it clear in your closing paragraph. A suggestion: before writing the last lines of your paper, read over what you have written. Then, without referring to your paper, try to put your view into writing.