Most markers decide a great deal about an essay before they reach the end of the first paragraph. Not because they are impatient, but because introductions are where good essays show their working. A strong opening tells the reader that you have understood the question, narrowed it sensibly, and know what you are going to argue. Everything after that becomes easier to write — and easier to mark.

What the Introduction Has to Do

An introduction is not a warm-up act. It is not a place for grand statements about the importance of your topic, and it is not a summary of everything you know. It is a contract between you and the reader.

By the end of it, the reader should be able to answer four questions:

• What exactly is this essay about?
• How are the key terms being used?
• What is the essay going to argue?
• In what order will the argument unfold, and why?

Those questions map onto four moves: context, definition, thesis and signposting. Introductions that lose marks are usually missing one of them.

Move One: Set the Context — Briefly

Context is not background. Background is everything that has ever happened in relation to your topic; context is the two or three sentences that make your question worth asking.

Start at the level your reader already occupies and move quickly to the specific problem. If your title concerns the ethics of drone warfare, the reader does not need to be told that war is destructive. They need to know which disagreement you are stepping into: the legality of targeted killing outside declared conflict zones, say, or the reliability of the intelligence behind it.

Weak context sentences announce importance rather than establish it:

Since the dawn of human civilisation, societies have debated the ethics of warfare.

A stronger version names the specific debate and hints at why the answer is not obvious:

Legal challenges to targeted killing outside declared conflict zones have exposed a tension between state security and international humanitarian law.

Two or three sentences of that kind are plenty.

Move Two: Define Your Terms

Definitions matter when a term is contested. Words such as fairness, freedom, sustainable and democratic carry different meanings in different literatures, and an argument built on a term you never defined is easy to pick apart.

You do not need a survey of every possible meaning. Give a working definition, say which sense you are adopting, and explain briefly why. For example: "This essay uses repatriation to mean the transfer of legal title to the country of origin, rather than a long-term loan." That single sentence does an enormous amount of work — it rules out a common counter-argument before it starts.

Skip this move if none of your key terms is ambiguous. Otherwise, treat it as compulsory. One warning: quoting a standard dictionary is not a definition. It tells the reader nothing about the sense in which you are using the word.

Move Three: Make a Thesis That Commits You

The thesis is the most important sentence in the essay. It should be arguable, specific, and directly responsive to the question set.

Use this test: could a thoughtful person disagree with it? If not, it is a description, not an argument.

This essay will explore both sides of the debate about X.

That sentence commits you to nothing. Compare:

This essay argues that X is justified in cases of A and B, but that its defenders overstate the case because of C.

Now the reader knows what they are being asked to accept, and your body paragraphs have a job to do.

A first-class thesis often carries a qualification. Scope, conditions and exceptions are strengths, not hedging, provided they are precise. "All" and "never" are far harder to defend than "in most cases" and "unless".

Move Four: Signpost the Route

Signposting tells the reader how the argument will unfold. Two sentences will usually do. What matters is that you give the order and the logic behind it.

Compare "Firstly… secondly… thirdly…" with something like this: "The essay begins with the ethical case for return, before testing it against three practical objections: cost, legal title, and the risk of setting an unworkable precedent. It then proposes a narrower principle that survives those objections."

The second version tells the reader not just what is coming, but why it is coming in that order.

Putting the Four Moves Together

Set against a question such as "Assess the argument that museums should return contested objects to their countries of origin", a complete introduction might run like this.

Renewed claims for the return of objects held in European and North American museums have moved from the margins of museum policy to the centre of it. This essay treats contested as applying to objects acquired through coercion or during colonial occupation, and return as the transfer of legal title rather than a loan. It argues that the ethical case for return is compelling in such cases, but that the claim fails as a general rule because it treats all acquisitions as morally equivalent. The essay first sets out the strongest version of the restitution argument, then examines two objections — that legal title is now settled, and that return would empty the universal museums — before defending a narrower principle based on the circumstances of acquisition.

Four moves, roughly 110 words. Nothing decorative, and no sentence that could be removed without loss.

Checking the Introduction Before You Move On

Write the introduction last. It is much easier to describe an argument once you know what it is, and the version you draft at the start is usually the version you will want to rewrite.

Keep it proportionate. As a rough guide, aim for around a tenth of your word count: 100–150 words for a 1,500-word essay, and 200–250 for a longer one. Overlong introductions normally mean the body is thin.

Then read it back and ask:

1. Does it answer the question as set, including instruction words such as assess, compare or to what extent?
2. Could the reader guess your conclusion from the thesis alone?
3. Have you used a key term that you never defined?
4. Does every sentence earn its place, or is one there only to sound impressive?
5. Would the essay still make sense if the reader began at paragraph two?

If the answer to the last question is yes, the introduction is doing its job.

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