Powerful Introductions - Various ways to start your introduction.

 Powerful Introductions - Various ways to start your introduction. 

• Raise a good question

• What is the difference between successful college students and unsuccessful college students? 

• Imaginary Scenario

• Imagine what your life would be like if you said everything that was ever on your mind.

• Quotation (make sure to give credit to the author)

• If you write an essay on the topic of education you could begin with: Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”

• Anecdote/Story

• I got off the train and pulled my luggage behind me.  A cab pulled up to the curb, and the driver got out.  He lifted my luggage and said, “Miss, I’m just going to put your stuff in the boot.”  I didn’t know what he meant until I saw him open the car’s trunk.  Then I realized the boot means car trunk.  I got in the cab, wondering how many other words would be different in England. 

• Powerful descriptive language and imagery

• She smiled kindly and stopped by the twisting river. Never before, looking at herself so intently in the water, had she understood who she was. Swimming had become her life. It was her passion.  

• Metaphor/Simile/Analogy

• "Working part-time as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly has given me a great opportunity to observe human behavior. Sometimes I think of the shoppers as white rats in a lab experiment, and the aisles as a maze designed by a psychologist. Most of the rats—customers, I mean—follow a routine pattern, strolling up and down the aisles, checking through my chute, and then escaping through the exit hatch. But not everyone is so dependable. My research has revealed three distinct types of abnormal customer: the amnesiac, the super shopper, and the dawdler."

– "Shopping at the Pig"

• Surprising Fact/Research to engage reader

• Almost two-thirds of American adults at some point in their life lived in a home with at least one gun. 

• Strong, assertive statement 

• Online college classes are cheaper and more effective than in-person college classes. 

• Get Personal

• "In March 2006, I found myself, at 38, divorced, no kids, no home, and alone in a tiny rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I hadn’t eaten a hot meal in two months. I’d had no human contact for weeks because my satellite phone had stopped working. All four of my oars were broken, patched up with duct tape and splints. I had tendinitis in my shoulders and saltwater sores on my backside. "I couldn’t have been happier...."

– Roz Savage, "My Transoceanic Midlife Crisis." Newsweek, March 20, 2011

• Use Humour/Joke

(sources: https://www.thoughtco.com/introductory-paragraph-essays-and-reports-1691081 and https://examples.yourdictionary.com/strong-introduction-examples.html)