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AP® English Language and Composition · Big Idea 1

2.A What an Introduction Has to Accomplish (RHS-1.I)

An introduction has to do three jobs at once: orient the reader to the subject, engage them enough to keep reading, and focus them on the claim the essay will argue.

Watch it drawn5 questionsPractice

A reader decides whether to trust you within a sentence or two, so an introduction cannot waste that attention on throat-clearing. It has three jobs, and it has to do all three. Orienting tells the reader what the subject is, in enough concrete detail that they know where they stand. Engaging gives them a reason to care, usually through something specific and a little surprising: a number, a scene, a detail that doesn't fit expectations. Focusing turns that attention into direction by naming, or clearly implying, the claim the essay is going to make. Skip orienting and the reader is lost. Skip engaging and they stop reading. Skip focusing and they keep reading but never find out what the essay is for.

A common misconception is that an introduction's job is to announce the essay's plan: 'In this essay I will examine three arguments and explain which I find most convincing.' That sentence orients, barely, but it doesn't engage anything, because nothing concrete has happened yet, and it doesn't focus, because naming a topic isn't the same as taking a position on it. An introduction has to make the question feel alive before it tells the reader where the essay stands on it. Announcing describes the essay from outside; introducing pulls the reader inside it.

This is why the opening and closing paragraphs carry the most rhetorical load in a piece: the opening spends the reader's sharpest attention, and the closing has to repay it by showing what the argument earned. An opening that engages without focusing, a gripping scene that the essay then abandons, leaves a reader entertained but unsure what was argued. That failure sits right next to the opposite one, an opening that focuses without engaging, which is accurate but forgettable. Both miss the same target: using the reader's first attention to point them, not just to hold them.

Key terms

Orient
To give the reader enough concrete information to know what subject the essay is about.
Engage
To give the reader a specific, often surprising reason to keep reading.
Focus
To name or clearly imply the claim the essay will argue, turning attention into direction.
Announcing
Describing what an essay will do instead of introducing the argument itself, a common weakness in openings.

Watch it explained

  1. How it worksHow does an introduction orient, engage and focus a reader in three distinct moves?
  2. How it worksWalk me through what an opening has to tell a reader about the subject and about you.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the job of an introduction to announce what the essay is about to do?
  4. Worked exampleShow me the three jobs at work in 'Last winter my town ran out of salt. Twice. Here is why.'
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to a reader when an opening engages them but never focuses them?

Check yourself

Your turneasy1 of 3
An essay opens: 'Last winter my town ran out of salt. Twice. The second time, the county sent 22 trucks to a depot that had been empty for 13 days, and the road crews found out from a radio call. Here is why a stockpile is a political decision and not a logistical one.' Which account of the opening's work is correct?

End of topic.

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