EFFECTS OF INTRODUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS IN ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT ESSAYS

Teachers and authors of guides to student writing, particularly writin g of an informative or argumentative genre, stress the importance of t he introductory and concluding sections in an essay. Within a discours e-processing framework, introductions and conclusions represent rhetor ical structures that affect comprehension of the text. However, there is little documented empirical evidence of how, and to what degree, th e introduction and conclusion affect the grade given to an essay. In t his experimental study, undergraduate students graded essays in which the quality of the introduction or conclusion was varied while the mai n body of the essay remained intact. The quality of the introduction h ad a greater effect on the grade awarded than did the quality of the c onclusion.