 Good morning and welcome back here to my channel, The London Writing Academic and I am here to talk about something really interesting, which I find interesting for myself, and hopefully useful for anyone else who's watching. And that is the stage at which you should write an introduction to a piece of writing. So by a piece of writing I mean it could be anything from a short text. Like for example an abstract to something longer like a full thesis or dissertation. Now traditionally, I have always written an introduction first. And to be honest, I have found it quite bizarre why people or how people would leave the introduction last, and I have heard people do this. There just haven't been one of them. I think for me it just seems logical when you do your plan. Obviously, you put the points that you'd like to make in the introduction and you can see from your plan what needs to be an introduction and then if you have anything in the rest of your structure, for example the main body and things like that. You can just navigate it through to the introduction, which is the idea for a plan it's supposed to, you know, it's supposed to sit through things and organize it for you so for example the stages. If you're familiar with any of my guides on how to develop your essays, we always begin with a brainstorm of ideas and things like that then we organize and then start drafting. In the process I feel like it just makes sense that you have your introduction. When I do the plans and when I teach people to do plans. I always do it like in three. So the introduction the main body and the conclusion. Now of course this is for a piece of writing like an essay, or just a standard paper of between 500 to 5000 words. I think above 5000 words I would consider to be pretty much a thesis or dissertation, but I always in my own opinion, and in my own practice and experience I would always do an introduction first, and it's always worked for me. So when people say they leave the introduction last. I mean, the argument they make is that they then know the points that they want to put. Now to me. That sounds like given an overview. And I think the introduction should include an overview, but the introduction shouldn't be just an overview. In my book, an easy guide to writing essays I do actually go through the stages and how to write an introduction, and the introduction isn't about just given an overview but it should a good introduction should kind of, it should give an overview to the reader of what's to come. So I feel like when people decide to leave the introduction to the end, and they want to know what they've written and then they want to put that into introduction but I feel at the stage of planning, you should already have an overview of what you're going to discuss. And then it's completely normal. It's completely acceptable to then revise it and then change things. But the writing the introduction last is something that I personally don't recommend. And it's something that I just don't do. And now of course you know if something works for people. I don't want to say don't do that but definitely that is not the way I would teach it if I'm honest it's not the way I teach it, and it's just not the way I do things. Then come to my PhD dissertation, my thesis which obviously is a considerably long piece of writing. And my supervisor and I, what we did is I have on my computer so I have a complete device that is for my thesis. And then I have another device for everything else so on the device which is my Microsoft surface pro and I use that specifically for my thesis. I have a file. And I have folders in there so I have the folders for all the chapters of my thesis. And so the introduction and then all the five chapters. And then I have another chapter for like things like the article and the work in progress and just like bits and, you know, pieces for organization and kind of just like content storage. We decided with my supervisor and I decided that we would start with a literature review and that's what I've been working on for the past six months. And we decided that I wouldn't go and start an introduction because kind of my introduction is basically like my confirmation document which is the paper that I had to write in order to get approved to go on to the thesis stage of my PhD. And then I have a kind of introduction flying around in my mind and in my PhD cloud. However, what I found is in my literature review there's a lot of background information that's just kind of just hovering, and then I feel I need to clear away from my literature review and would make sense in my introduction which is why having the folders for the chapters in my thesis is really useful because I can just easily move content from one chapter to another. So I am now I have worked on three drafts of my literature review which I've submitted to my supervisor and we've sat down and discussed it and gone through where she's given me feedback and I'm kind of at the final stage for the time being because my literature review is an ongoing thing. It's not going to like just stop until you know I actually finished my thesis, but what I am doing now is I'm moving a lot of like background information and things that are quite general into my introduction and I feel I'm going to have a stab at my thesis introduction which is called introduction chapter, which of course is every chapter at this stage will be a work in chapter, because there will be a point where I come before I submit my thesis and I'm going to spend a good chunk of time, revising everything. The chapters will considerably change, but I just feel that having the introduction at this stage, where I don't regret starting with my literature review I think my literature review is essentially the foundation because it's giving me a lot of basically I've done a lot of reading and I kind of am able now to be like okay this is what I need to separate from my systematic review. This is too general this is too you know too much of a background content or context setting. I know this needs to be in the introduction but I feel that to really like get my thesis like to just get it really moving in the way that I want it I feel like now is the time that I'm going to fully do my introduction which of course like I said is a working introduction. I will be revising it constantly until the end where I may change it entirely, but what it will do is it's kind of like I know that I've done the intro, and I felt, what I feel is that all the time in the path where I started off with the introduction it's given me a setting, and kind of like, you know, the foundation to go on. So, that's just my little food for thought on this Monday morning is like at what stage do you write your introduction, and I do feel that just a general paper, like an essay, or review, I feel that the introduction is just something that should be done just like you know from the onset, but of course something that is more intricate and, you know, a bigger piece of writing or a much, much larger piece of writing like a thesis is something that you can consider doing the introduction at a later stage, although in my own personal experience I personally feel now that I'm not. I want to get it done at this stage before proceeding on to chapter three, which is going to be my methodology and then of course you know the data collection all that kind of stuff, and then the analysis. So, yeah, what do you think of that, what is your experience and what stage do you write your introductions are you one of the people who writes your introductions. What are you in my team, where we do the introduction first and then let the rest of the paper follow. I would like to hear your thoughts on this. You'll see me in my next video, or over in my academic community on Patreon where I am posting content for IELTS writing task one throughout July. Okay guys, bye.