how do you conclude a conflict essay

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How to Conclude an Essay (with Examples)

Last Updated: May 24, 2024 Fact Checked

Writing a Strong Conclusion

What to avoid, brainstorming tricks.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams and by wikiHow staff writer, Aly Rusciano . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,211,370 times.

So, you’ve written an outstanding essay and couldn’t be more proud. But now you have to write the final paragraph. The conclusion simply summarizes what you’ve already written, right? Well, not exactly. Your essay’s conclusion should be a bit more finessed than that. Luckily, you’ve come to the perfect place to learn how to write a conclusion. We’ve put together this guide to fill you in on everything you should and shouldn’t do when ending an essay. Follow our advice, and you’ll have a stellar conclusion worthy of an A+ in no time.

Tips for Ending an Essay

• Rephrase your thesis to include in your final paragraph to bring the essay full circle.
• End your essay with a call to action, warning, or image to make your argument meaningful.
• Keep your conclusion concise and to the point, so you don’t lose a reader’s attention.
• Do your best to avoid adding new information to your conclusion and only emphasize points you’ve already made in your essay.

• “All in all”
• “Ultimately”
• “Furthermore”
• “As a consequence”
• “As a result”

• Make sure to write your main points in a new and unique way to avoid repetition.

• Let’s say this is your original thesis statement: “Allowing students to visit the library during lunch improves campus life and supports academic achievement.”
• Restating your thesis for your conclusion could look like this: “Evidence shows students who have access to their school’s library during lunch check out more books and are more likely to complete their homework.”
• The restated thesis has the same sentiment as the original while also summarizing other points of the essay.

• “When you use plastic water bottles, you pollute the ocean. Switch to using a glass or metal water bottle instead. The planet and sea turtles will thank you.”
• “The average person spends roughly 7 hours on their phone a day, so there’s no wonder cybersickness is plaguing all generations.”
• “Imagine walking on the beach, except the soft sand is made up of cigarette butts. They burn your feet but keep washing in with the tide. If we don’t clean up the ocean, this will be our reality.”
• “ Lost is not only a show that changed the course of television, but it’s also a reflection of humanity as a whole.”
• “If action isn’t taken to end climate change today, the global temperature will dangerously rise from 4.5 to 8 °F (−15.3 to −13.3 °C) by 2100.”

• Focus on your essay's most prevalent or important parts. What key points do you want readers to take away or remember about your essay?

• For instance, instead of writing, “That’s why I think that Abraham Lincoln was the best American President,” write, “That’s why Abraham Lincoln was the best American President.”
• There’s no room for ifs, ands, or buts—your opinion matters and doesn’t need to be apologized for!

• For instance, words like “firstly,” “secondly,” and “thirdly” may be great transition statements for body paragraphs but are unnecessary in a conclusion.

• For instance, say you began your essay with the idea that humanity’s small sense of sense stems from space’s vast size. Try returning to this idea in the conclusion by emphasizing that as human knowledge grows, space becomes smaller.

• For example, you could extend an essay on the television show Orange is the New Black by bringing up the culture of imprisonment in America.

Community Q&A

• Always review your essay after writing it for proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and don’t be afraid to revise. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Have somebody else proofread your essay before turning it in. The other person will often be able to see errors you may have missed!

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• ↑ https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/helps/self-help-resources/grammar/transition-signals
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/argument_papers/conclusions.html
• ↑ http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/conclude.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions
• ↑ https://www.pittsfordschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=542&dataid=4677&FileName=conclusions1.pdf
• ↑ https://www.cuyamaca.edu/student-support/tutoring-center/files/student-resources/how-to-write-a-good-conclusion.pdf
• ↑ https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185935

About This Article

To end an essay, start your conclusion with a phrase that makes it clear your essay is coming to a close, like "In summary," or "All things considered." Then, use a few sentences to briefly summarize the main points of your essay by rephrasing the topic sentences of your body paragraphs. Finally, end your conclusion with a call to action that encourages your readers to do something or learn more about your topic. In general, try to keep your conclusion between 5 and 7 sentences long. For more tips from our English co-author, like how to avoid common pitfalls when writing an essay conclusion, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay - Tips and Examples

The conclusion of your essay is like the grand finale of a fireworks display. It's the last impression you leave on your reader, the moment that ties everything together and leaves them with a lasting impact. 

But for many writers, crafting a conclusion can feel like an afterthought, a hurdle to jump after the excitement of developing the main body of their work. Fear not! This article will equip you with the tools and techniques regarding how to write a conclusion for an essay that effectively summarizes your main points, strengthens your argument, and leaves your reader feeling satisfied and engaged.

What Is a Conclusion

In an essay, the conclusion acts as your final curtain call. It's where you revisit your initial claim (thesis), condense your main supporting arguments, and leave the reader with a lasting takeaway. 

Imagine it as the bridge that connects your ideas to a broader significance. A well-crafted conclusion does more than simply summarize; it elevates your points and offers a sense of closure, ensuring the reader leaves with a clear understanding of your argument's impact. In the next section, you will find conclusion ideas that you could use for your essay.

Please note that our online paper writing service can provide you not only with a stand-alone conclusion but with a fully new composition as well!

Types of Conclusion

Here's a breakdown of various conclusion types, each serving a distinct purpose:

How Long Should a Conclusion Be

The ideal length of a conclusion depends on the overall length of your essay, but there are some general guidelines:

• Shorter Essays (500-750 words): Aim for 3-5 sentences. This ensures you effectively wrap up your points without adding unnecessary content.
• Medium Essays (750-1200 words): Here, you can expand to 5-8 sentences. This provides more space to elaborate on your concluding thought or call to action.
• Longer Essays (1200+ words): For these, you can have a conclusion of 8-10 sentences. This allows for a more comprehensive summary or a more nuanced exploration of the future implications or broader significance of your topic.

Here are some additional factors to consider:

• The complexity of your argument: If your essay explores a multifaceted topic, your conclusion might need to be slightly longer to address all the points adequately.
• Type of conclusion: A call to action or a hypothetical scenario might require a few extra sentences for elaboration compared to a simple summary.

Remember: The most important aspect is ensuring your conclusion effectively summarizes your main points, leaves a lasting impression, and doesn't feel rushed or tacked on.

Here's a helpful rule of thumb:

• Keep it proportional: Your conclusion should be roughly 5-10% of your total essay length.

How many sentences should a conclusion be?

Conclusion Transition Words

Transition words for conclusion act like signposts for your reader. They smoothly guide them from the main body of your essay to your closing thoughts, ensuring a clear and logical flow of ideas. Here are some transition words specifically suited for concluding your essay:

Remember, the best transition word will depend on the specific type of conclusion you're aiming for.

How to Write a Conclusion

Every essay or dissertation writer knows that the toughest part of working on a conclusion can be striking the right balance. You want to effectively summarize your main points without redundancy, leaving a lasting impression that feels fresh and impactful, all within a concise and focused section. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you write a stunning essay conclusion:

Restate Your Thesis

Briefly remind your reader of your essay's central claim. This doesn't have to be a word-for-word repetition but a concise restatement that refreshes their memory.

Summarize Key Points

In a few sentences, revisit the main arguments you used to support your thesis. When writing a conclusion, don't get bogged down in details, but offer a high-level overview that reinforces your essay's focus.

Leave a Lasting Impression

This is where your knowledge of how to write a good conclusion can shine! Consider a thought-provoking question, a call to action, or a connection to a broader truth—something that lingers in the reader's mind and resonates beyond the final sentence.

Avoid Introducing New Information

The conclusion paragraph shouldn't introduce entirely new ideas. Stick to wrapping up your existing arguments and leaving a final thought.

Ensure Flow and Readability

Transition smoothly from the main body of your essay to the conclusion. Use transition words like "in conclusion," "finally," or "as a result," and ensure your closing sentences feel natural and well-connected to the rest of your work.

Note that you can simply buy essay at any time and focus on other more important assignments or just enjoy your free time.

Conclusion Paragraph Outline

Here's an outline to help you better understand how to write a conclusion paragraph:

• Tailor the length of your conclusion to your essay's overall length (shorter essays: 3-5 sentences, longer essays: 8-10 sentences).
• Ensure a smooth transition from the main body using transition words.
• Avoid introducing new information; focus on wrapping up your existing points.
• Proofread for clarity and ensure your conclusion ties everything together and delivers a final impactful statement.

Read more: Persuasive essay outline . 

Do’s and Don’ts of Essay Conclusion Writing

According to professional term paper writers , a strong conclusion is essential for leaving a lasting impression on your reader. Here's a list of action items you should and shouldn’t do when writing an essay conclusion:

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Conclusion Examples

A strong conclusion isn't just an afterthought – it's the capstone of your essay. Here are five examples of conclusion paragraphs for essays showcasing different techniques to craft a powerful closing to make your essay stand out.

1. Call to Action: (Essay About the Importance of Recycling)

In conclusion, the environmental impact of our waste is undeniable. We all have a responsibility to adopt sustainable practices. We can collectively make a significant difference by incorporating simple changes like recycling into our daily routines. Join the movement – choose to reuse, reduce, and recycle.

2. Provocative Question: (Essay Exploring the Potential Consequences of Artificial Intelligence)

As artificial intelligence rapidly evolves, it's crucial to consider its impact on humanity. While AI holds immense potential for progress, will it remain a tool for good, or will it eventually surpass human control? This question demands our collective attention, as the decisions we make today will shape the future of AI and its impact on our world.

3. Universal Insight: (Essay Analyzing a Historical Event)

The study of history offers valuable lessons that transcend time. The events of the [insert historical event] remind us that even small acts of defiance can have a ripple effect, inspiring change and ultimately leading to a brighter future. Every voice has the power to make a difference, and courage can be contagious.

4. Future Implications: (Essay Discussing the Rise of Social Media)

Social media's explosive growth has transformed how we connect and consume information. While these platforms offer undeniable benefits, their long-term effects on social interaction, mental health, and political discourse require careful consideration. As social media continues to evolve, we must remain vigilant and ensure it remains a tool for positive connection and not a source of division.

5. Hypothetical Scenario: (Essay Arguing for the Importance of Space Exploration)

Imagine a world where our understanding of the universe is limited to Earth. We miss out on the potential for groundbreaking discoveries in physics, medicine, and our place in the cosmos. By continuing to venture beyond our planet, we push the boundaries of human knowledge and inspire future generations to reach for the stars.

Recommended for reading: Nursing essay examples .

Difference Between Good and Weak Conclusions

Not all conclusions are created equal. A weak ending can leave your reader feeling stranded, unsure of where your essay has taken them. Conversely, writing a conclusion that is strong acts as a landing pad, summarizing your key points and leaving a lasting impression.

Nailed that essay? Don't blow it with a lame ending! A good conclusion is like the mic drop at the end of a rap song. It reminds the reader of your main points but in a cool new way. Throw in a thought-provoking question, a call to action, or a connection to something bigger, and you'll leave them thinking long after they turn the page.

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How To Write A Conclusion For An Essay?

How to write a good conclusion, how to write a conclusion for a college essay.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

• Updated writing tips.
• Added informative tables.
• Added conclusion example.
• Added an article conclusion.
• Essay Conclusions | UMGC. (n.d.). University of Maryland Global Campus. https://www.umgc.edu/current-students/learning-resources/writing-center/writing-resources/writing/essay-conclusions
• How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay | BestColleges. (n.d.). BestColleges.com. https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/how-to-write-a-conclusion/
• Ending the Essay: Conclusions | Harvard College Writing Center. (n.d.). https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions

Related Articles

How to Write a Conclusion: Tips and Examples for a Strong Final Word

by Kaelyn Barron | 1 comment

Just as a lawyer’s closing argument can make or break the outcome of a case, so too can the final paragraph of your essay or the last chapter of your book.

Even if you’ve presented knockout arguments and indisputable evidence all throughout your paper, it won’t amount to much if a flimsy closing is what’s left in your reader’s memory. That’s why learning how to write a strong conclusion is an essential skill for effective writing.

What Is a Concluding Paragraph?

The concluding paragraph is the final section of your research paper, report, or any other kind of essay , including expository or descriptive papers.

The goal of the paragraph is to wrap up your main points, show how they connect and why they matter, and demonstrate to your readers that you’ve achieved what you set out to do in your paper.

At this point, you shouldn’t introduce any new points, information, or arguments; that should all be covered in the body of your paper. Your conclusion, instead, should offer readers a sense of closure.

How to Write a Conclusion

To write a strong conclusion, there are several “do’s” you’ll want to keep in mind.

1. Synthesize your main points.

While your summary should neatly wrap up your paper and tie up any loose ends, you should note the difference between summarizing and synthesizing your main points.

It’s okay to summarize your main points, but your conclusion shouldn’t just be a repetition of what was in your paper. Instead, synthesize the information you presented by showing your readers how those points fit together and support your primary argument.

2. Address the “So what?”

Your conclusion should adequately address the question “So what?” In other words, it should show your audience why everything you’ve argued matters and why they should care.

For every statement you make in your concluding paragraph, ask yourself “so what?” until it’s clearly and concisely been addressed.

3. Write with conviction.

Your conclusion isn’t the place to get wishy-washy or iffy about your arguments. Stand by the points you’ve made and write with conviction.

This doesn’t mean you can’t be humble or you can’t acknowledge other possibilities or arguments. You should do both of those things!

Writing with conviction simply means avoiding phrases like “might,” “could,” or “I believe” to express your opinions.

If you really believe in what you’re writing, then say things affirmatively and refer to your specific arguments to back your statement. For example, if you think action needs to be taken, use “should” or “must” instead of the more weak “could.” Wherever you can, choose strong verbs or weak weasel words .

See more examples of weak vs. strong language in a concluding statement below.

Weak : Governments might want to consider taking action to fight climate change because doing so has many potential benefits.

Strong : Governments must take stronger action against climate change because doing so will create more jobs, raise the quality of living, and decrease health complications associated with pollution.

4. End with a call to action.

The end of your paper should contain a call to action (ideal for persuasive essays) or questions for further thought (this option might be more relevant for research papers, or essays that describe rather than argue).

Your call to action doesn’t necessarily have to address your readers directly; you might suggest an action that the government, a business, or other groups of people should take. Tell your readers what should happen next based on the arguments you’ve made throughout your paper.

Example : Post-conflict reconstruction offers a window of time in which pre-existing policies can be reevaluated and amended. All states should be armed with the knowledge and skills to critically address issues of inequality and ensure that these issues are not exacerbated after times of conflict.

What to Avoid in Your Concluding Paragraph

There are also some “dont’s” to consider when writing your concluding paragraph.

Don’t introduce new ideas or information.

Your conclusion is not the place to introduce new information or ideas. Instead, this should be your final appeal to your audience, where you show them why all those well-researched points make sense together and actually matter—so don’t attempt to open any new cans of worms!

This will only distract your audience, and since this is your conclusion, you likely won’t have the space to fully develop any new arguments effectively.

Don’t just restate your thesis.

Your conclusion should absolutely drive home your main argument, or thesis statement. However, it should be rephrased in such a way that it still hits the nail on the head, but doesn’t sound like your just repeating your introduction.

This is where effectively answering the “so what” question comes in handy. Your rephrased thesis in your conclusion should directly address that question in a way that’s satisfying to readers—after reading it, they should clearly see why your argument is relevant and worth considering.

Don’t change your tone in the conclusion.

One final thing to avoid in your conclusion is a sudden and drastic change of tone . For example, if you’re writing a research paper with an academic, analytical tone, then you shouldn’t switch gears in your conclusion to an emotion-driven plea.

Try to be consistent in your tone throughout the entirety of your paper. You can still move your readers and change minds with facts and reason, rather than making a sentimental appeal that’s out of character with the rest of your presentation.

What Is an Example of a Conclusion?

Through the information they present and the ways they present it, the media have the power to shape an individual’s view of their environment. In the case of Southern Italy, the stories and images presented in the news often carry negative connotations. Research, including surveys of headlines, has illustrated that

Through their involvement in the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, the women of South Africa and Liberia demonstrated the valuable skills and unique perspectives that women can bring to post-conflict reconstruction. While these TRC’s should be commended for their efforts to include women, there were several key factors that limited the potential for transformative change in these societies, even though the opportunities were present. A better use of gender mainstreaming was needed, because while the Commissions achieved gender balancing, they failed to examine the importance of gender perceptions during the conflict. Post-conflict reconstruction offers a window of time in which pre-existing policies can be reevaluated and amended. All states should be armed with the knowledge and skills to critically address issues of inequality and ensure that these issues are not exacerbated after times of conflict.

What Words Can You Use to Start a Conclusion?

There are a number of words and phrases that can be used to indicate to readers that they have reached your conclusion, such as “finally,” “in conclusion,” or “in summary.”

However, these phrases are overused and have become clichéd . And they’re actually not necessary!

To start your conclusion, you can use a unique transition that flows well from the sentences preceding it, or simply get to your rephrased thesis and work on tying your points together.

More Essay Writing Tips

Ending with a strong conclusion is just as important as opening with a powerful thesis, so make sure you leave your audience with a clear understanding of your argument, along with a call to action or something to reflect on as you wrap things up.

For more tips for effective writing, check out our post on how to write a research paper , which will walk you through the steps of presenting your findings.

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:

• How to Write a Book Report in 4 Easy Steps
• How to Write an Expository Essay: Types, Tips, and Topics
• How to Write a Literature Review: 5 Steps for Clear and Meaningful Research
• How to Write an Essay: 7 Steps for Clear, Effective Writing

As a blog writer for TCK Publishing, Kaelyn loves crafting fun and helpful content for writers, readers, and creative minds alike. She has a degree in International Affairs with a minor in Italian Studies, but her true passion has always been writing. Working remotely allows her to do even more of the things she loves, like traveling, cooking, and spending time with her family.

Thanks for this enlightening piece on how to write a conclusion. I stumbled upon it on at the right when my editor asked that I should insert a conclusion on the chapter I have submitted.

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Need editing and proofreading services, how to write a conclusion for an essay (examples included).

• Tags: Essay , Essay Writing

Condensing a 1,000-plus-word essay into a neat little bundle may seem like a Herculean task. You must summarize all your findings and justify their importance within a single paragraph. 

But, when you discover the formula for writing a conclusion paragraph, things get much simpler! 

But, how to write a conclusion paragraph for an essay, and more importantly, how to make it impactful enough? Through this article, we will walk you through the process of constructing a powerful conclusion that leaves a lingering impression on readers’ minds. We will also acquaint you with essay conclusion examples for different types of essays. 

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Let’s start from the beginning: How can you write a conclusion for an essay?

How to write a conclusion for an essay

In order to write an effective conclusion, you must first understand what is a conclusion in an essay. It is not just the summary of the main points of your essay. A well-written conclusion effectively ties together the main ideas of your essay and also pays heed to their broader implications. The objectives of your concluding paragraph are as follows:

• Highlight the significance of your essay topic
• Tie together the key points of your essay
• Leave the reader with something to ponder about

A good essay conclusion begins with a modified thesis statement that is altered on the basis of the information stated throughout the essay. It then ties together all the main points of the essay and ends with a clincher that highlights the broader implications of your thesis statement. 

Now that we’ve understood the basics of how to conclude an essay, let’s understand the key aspects of a good conclusion paragraph. 

1. Restating your thesis statement

If you want to understand how to start a conclusion, you must realize that involves more than just restating the thesis statement word for word. Your thesis statement needs to be updated and expanded upon as per the information provided in your essay. 

There are many ways to start a conclusion. One such method could be to start with the revised version of your thesis statement that hints to the significance of your argument. After this, your conclusion paragraph can organically move on to your arguments in the essay. 

Let’s take a look at an effective way of writing a conclusion for an essay:

If the following claim is your thesis statement:

Virtual reality (VR) is undeniably altering the perception of reality by revolutionizing various industries, reshaping human experiences, and challenging traditional notions of what is real.

The restated thesis statement will be as follows: 

Our analysis has substantiated the claim that virtual reality (VR) is significantly transforming the way we perceive reality. It has revolutionized industries, reshaped human experiences, and challenged traditional notions of reality.

2. Tying together the main points

Tying together all the main points of your essay does not mean simply summarizing them in an arbitrary manner. The key is to link each of your main essay points in a coherent structure. One point should follow the other in a logical format.

The goal is to establish how each of these points connects to the message of your essay as a whole. You can also take the help of powerful quotes or impactful reviews to shed a unique light on your essay. 

Let’s take a look at an example:

VR presents a new paradigm where the distinction between the real and the virtual becomes increasingly blurred. As users dive into immersive virtual worlds, they are confronted with questions about the nature of reality, perception, and the boundaries of human consciousness. 

3. Constructing an impactful conclusion

Most of us are confused about how to end an essay with a bang. The answer is quite simple! The final line of your essay should be impactful enough to create a lasting impression on the reader. More importantly, it should also highlight the significance of your essay topic. This could mean the broader implications of your topic, either in your field of study or in general.

Optionally, you could also try to end your essay on an optimistic note that motivates or encourages the reader. If your essay is about eradicating a problem in society, highlight the positive effects achieved by the eradication of that problem. 

Here’s an example of how to end an essay:

In a world where virtual boundaries dissolve, VR is the catalyst that reshapes our perception of reality, forever altering the landscape of the human experience.

Here’s a combined version of all three aspects:

Our analysis has substantiated the claim that Virtual Reality (VR) is significantly transforming how we perceive reality. It has revolutionized industries, reshaped human experiences, and challenged traditional notions of reality. It presents a new paradigm where the distinction between the real and the virtual becomes increasingly blurred. As users dive into immersive virtual worlds, they are confronted with questions about the nature of reality, perception, and the boundaries of human consciousness. In a world where virtual boundaries dissolve, it is the catalyst that reshapes our perception of reality, forever altering the landscape of the human experience.

Now that we’ve understood the structure of a concluding paragraph, let’s look at what to avoid while writing a conclusion. 

What to avoid in your conclusion paragraph

When learning how to write a conclusion for an essay, you must also know what to avoid. You want to strengthen your argument with the help of a compelling conclusion paragraph, and not undermine it by confusing the reader. 

Let’s take a look at a few strategies to avoid in your essay conclusion:

1. Avoid including new evidence

The conclusion should not introduce new information but rather strengthen the arguments that are already made. If you come across any unique piece of information regarding your essay topic, accommodate it into your body paragraphs rather than stuffing it into your conclusion.

Including new, contradictory information in the concluding paragraph not only confuses the reader but also weakens your argument. You may include a powerful quote that strengthens the message of your essay, or an example that sheds light on the importance of your argument. However, this does not include introducing a completely new argument or making a unique point.

2. Avoid the use of concluding phrases

Your conclusion should hint towards your essay coming to an end, instead of blatantly stating the obvious. Blatant concluding statements undermine the quality of your essay, making it clumsy and amateurish. They also significantly diminish the quality of your arguments. 

It is a good idea to avoid the following statements while concluding your essay:

• In conclusion,
• In summary,

While using these statements may not be incorrect per se, hinting towards a conclusion creates a better impression on the reader rather than blatantly stating it. 

Here are more effective statements you could use:

• Let this essay serve as a catalyst for…
• As we navigate the intricacies of this multifaceted topic, remember…
• As I bid farewell to this subject…

3. Don’t undermine your argument

Although there might be several points of view regarding your essay topic, it is crucial that you stick to your own. You may have stated and refuted other points of view in your body paragraphs. 

However, your conclusion is simply meant to strengthen your main argument. Mentioning other points of view in your essay conclusion, not only weakens your argument but also creates a poor impression of your essay.

Here are a few phrases you should avoid in your essay conclusion:

• There are several methods to approach this topic.
• There are plenty of good points for both sides of the argument.
• There is no clear solution to this problem.

Examples of essay conclusions

Different types of essays make use of different forms of conclusions. The critical question of “how to start a conclusion paragraph” has many different answers. To help you further, we’ve provided a few good conclusions for essays that are based on the four main essay types.

1. Narrative essay conclusion

The following essay conclusion example elaborates on the narrator’s unique experience with homeschooling.

• Restated thesis statement
• Body paragraph summary
• Closing statement

My experience with homeschooling has been a journey that has shaped me in profound ways. Through the challenges and triumphs, I have come to appreciate the unique advantages and personal growth that homeschooling can offer. As I reflect on my journey, I am reminded of the transformative power of this alternative education approach. It has empowered me to take ownership of my education, nurture my passions, and develop skills that extend far beyond the confines of academic achievement. Whether in traditional classrooms or homeschooling environments, it is through embracing and nurturing the unique potential within each of us that we can truly thrive and make a lasting impact on the world.

2. Descriptive essay conclusion

The following essay conclusion example elaborates on the narrator’s bond with their cat.

The enchanting presence that my cat has cannot be ignored, captivating my heart with her grace, charm, and unconditional love. Through the moments of playfulness, companionship, and affection, she has become an irreplaceable member of my family. As I continue to cherish the memories and lessons learned from her, I am reminded of the extraordinary power of the human-animal bond. In their company, we find solace, companionship, and a love that transcends words. In a world that can be challenging and tumultuous, never underestimate the profound impact that animals can have on our lives. In their presence, not only do we find love but also a profound sense of connection.

3. Argumentative essay conclusion

Here’s an essay conclusion example that elaborates on the marginalization of, and acute intolerance towards, LGBTQ+ individuals. 

The journey toward equality for LGBTQ+ individuals is an ongoing battle that demands our unwavering commitment to justice and inclusion. It is evident that while progress has been made, the journey toward equality for these individuals is far from complete. It demands our continued advocacy, activism, and support for legislative change, societal acceptance, and the creation of inclusive environments. The struggle for LGBTQ+ equality is a fight for the very essence of human dignity and the recognition of our shared humanity. It is a battle that requires our collective efforts, determination, and an unyielding belief in the fundamental principles of equality and justice.

4. Expository essay conclusion

This example of an essay conclusion revolves around a psychological phenomenon named the bandwagon effect and examines its potential ill effects on society:

The bandwagon effect in psychology is a fascinating phenomenon that sheds light on the powerful influence of social conformity on individual behavior and decision-making processes. This effect serves as a reminder of the inherently social nature of human beings and the power of social influence in shaping our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. It underscores the importance of critical thinking, individual autonomy, and the ability to resist the pressure of conformity. By understanding its mechanisms and implications, we can guard against its potential pitfalls and actively foster independent thought and decision-making, also contributing to a more enlightened and progressive society.

Now that you’ve taken a closer look at different conclusions for essays, it’s time to put this knowledge to good use. If you need to take your essay up a notch and score high, professional essay editing services are your best bet.

Happy writing!

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How to Write a Conclusion for an Argumentative Essay: All Tips

Table of contents

• 1 What to Write in the Conclusion for an Argumentative Essay
• 2.1 Know how to structure your paper
• 3 How to Start the Conclusion of an Essay?
• 4.1 Example 1
• 4.2 Example 2
• 4.3 Example 3
• 4.4 Examples 4, 5
• 5 How to Finish an Argumentative Project Conclusion Paragraph

Want to write a perfect conclusion for your paper but don’t know how? Everyone has been there, and it’s never easy. It is the final part of your writing, so by the time you reach it, you have no energy and can’t focus.

Still, the conclusion part is crucial for the success of every paper. You have to give the final answer to the audience by restating your thesis and noting your claims and findings. If you think you can’t write one, you’d better buy an argumentative essay online and solve your problems.

In this article, you will find everything you need to know about a conclusion to an argumentative essay and how to write it.

What to Write in the Conclusion for an Argumentative Essay

To write a conclusion argumentative essay, you first need to recall all the key points of your writing. The college argumentative essay outline you have written can significantly assist you in this. After you have noted these points, you should restate your rephrased thesis and findings.

Except for those basic points, knowing how to conclude an argumentative essay also requires a few more things:

The first thing to pay attention to is your tone of writing. Make sure it is authoritative yet calm and informative. This way, you will assure readers that your work is essential for the case.

Next is your first sentence. How you start your conclusion does matter. You need to state what you did and why. That will remind the readers once again about what they have read.

After you write it, you will need to point out the key findings of your writing. You must note the important evidence you have written about in your paper. Keep it brief and connect them to your text conclusion.

The last step is to finish the conclusion of your argumentative essay in a meaningful way. Ensure a positive final sentence to make the reader reflect on your work and make them act.

Thus, writing a conclusion for an argumentative essay is a complex process. It can be not easy to come up with a good conclusion on your own, so don’t hesitate to seek essay assistance if you need it. Once again, no matter what kind of conclusion you write, it is crucial to have a good one. That goes even for argumentative essays, where you can write everything straight as it is. You can be assertive and direct without considering whether the reader will like your argument. Still, you must keep a good transition between the sections and stick to the basic structure and rules.

Author Note: Make sure not to present any new arguments or claims in the conclusion. This section of your paper is your final opinion. Writing further details, ideas, or irrelevant findings can ruin the text.

How to Format the Conclusion of an Argumentative Essay?

To format a conclusion, you have to follow a well-established standard. The best argumentative essay conclusion example includes a “lead” (opening statement). Then point out one vital factor from your paragraph. Usually, one point per paragraph, no more, or it will get too bulky. Finally, add an appropriate finale that will serve as a smooth exit of the whole paper, the final sentence.

By using the standard format, you will have an easier time when you have to write an argumentative essay conclusion. You can focus on the facts and tailor them to appeal to readers. That will re-convince them about your point for the case.

Here we can add that the final sentence should not always be smooth and friendly. When your conclusion tone is assertive, write the final part of the finale as a call to action—an attempt to affect the reader and make them want to research. To find out more about the matter or even take a stand with their own opinion.

Know how to structure your paper

• 12-point Times New Roman
• 0″ between paragraphs
• 1″ margin all around
• double-spaced (275 words/page) / single-spaced (550 words/page)
• 0.5″ first line of a paragraph

Knowing the exact way to structure a conclusion in an argumentative essay is crucial. Someone may say that it is not important. But this is one of the first things people pay attention to. So, you have to format the paper and its main points properly. In any assignment, the style of the text adheres to strict requirements. Usually, you can find them by asking your professor or checking the educational institution’s website.

In that sense, you must stick to proper formatting when writing a perfect argumentative essay . To get the best grade, you have to use the  recommended formatting style , which can be APA, AP, or other. So remember, following the proper structure and formatting can make the critical points of your work stand out. As a result, your paper will look better, and your paper results will score higher.

Writing a perfect conclusion for your paper can be difficult, especially when you have no energy and can’t focus. Fortunately, PapersOwl.com is here to help. Our experienced writers can provide you with an excellent conclusion for your paper so that you can confidently submit it.

How to Start the Conclusion of an Essay?

A conclusion to an argumentative essay must go through various steps. The foremost will be the entry sentence. Then, restate your main idea and critical points from your writing. You can add a question or two, but it depends on the flow of your text. Note how it reads and make sure everything sounds smooth, and the transition is flawless.

Note: You should check your outline for significant findings or arguments. Do that before starting with the first sentence of your conclusion. Make sure not to miss important facts or add new ones by mistake.

Essay Conclusion Examples

If you are still trying to figure out what your conclusion should look like, check below. We have prepared how-to-end argumentative essay examples . These can give you an idea about the structure and format of your paper’s final point.

In this particular sample, the case is about global warming. So, the essay’s conclusion has to give a compelling reason why the reader and the public should act and prevent the issue. You must remember that what you write depends on the type of paper and should be unique.

“Throughout our text, we pointed out findings about the impact of global warming. Nature cannot sustain itself in the ever-changing climate. The ice caps melt, and the shorelines deteriorate, thus causing the extinction of both flora and fauna. Due to the persisting crisis, we must take action and use the best methods to protect the future of our planet.”

Some papers involve public policies and morals. In such cases, you must write in a tone that will feel morally right but will support and justify your arguments. Usually, you write such papers when your topic is pointing towards persuasion. Below, you can see an argumentative essay conclusion example for such texts.

“As time goes on, technology has changed how we, as a society, receive and use information. Media’s influence has been increasing throughout the social applications we use daily. The said impacts public opinion, as we can see from the participants in our study group. Most have stated that their primary information source is social media. These media get large funds from private entities to filter your content. This way, you see their ideas and become part of their audience. If you like your news free of filtering and want truthful information, you must act now and ensure your rights.”

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At one point or another, you will get an assignment to help with your career objectives. Usually, it is connected to your writing as you have to research specific matters. For example, bring out your point of view and make conclusions. You can quickly implement such tasks in essays like the argumentative one. Thus, you have to be ready to write a conclusion of an argumentative essay that can fit well and is decisive.

“Often, when you get the opportunity to launch a new business, you must grab it. Plan business meetings, solve the x, y, and z obstacles, and speed up the process. Business is about profit, producing more revenue, and creating an easily manageable structure. If you choose to act on a different undertaking, there will be risks a or b, which can lead to overstepping the estimated budgets.”

Examples 4, 5

As seen, the conclusion of an argumentative essay can depend on your moral choices. In other cases, on a figure of speech and even sensitivity towards an issue. So, some good argumentative essay topics need an emotional appeal to the reader.

Good conclusion paragraph examples for an argumentative essay can be about any topic. They can be something like whether abortion is a fundamental right for women. In such essay cases, your moral perspective plays a considerable role. But, no matter your point, it is crucial to state your ideas without offending anyone else.

“The right to give birth or not is fundamental for women. They must have it ensured. Otherwise, they have no control or option in their social relationships. The analysis showcases how an unwanted pregnancy can influence and determine the life of a young woman and her child. So without guaranteed rights, women are forced to use dangerous methods to retake ownership of their body, and that must change.” “Life is not a choice given by someone. It is a fundamental right guaranteed by the law. In that sense, denying an unborn child’s right to life is identical to denying any other person’s rights. Furthermore, studies have long proven that life begins with its inception. Therefore, carrying out policies of pro-choice is like murder. With that in mind, saving the unborn by speaking out for them is like giving their rights a voice.”

How to Finish an Argumentative Project Conclusion Paragraph

How to end an argumentative essay? The answer is a strong finishing line. The final sentence is what will leave a deep impression on your reader. Usually, we finish it smoothly in a cordial tone. It must be in a way that will make the reader think about the case or take some action. In other cases, the call to action is intense. It could be smoother, but its main goal is to influence the audience to contemplate and act.

Taking into consideration the importance of the last sentence, you must write it correctly. Remember that its point is to move the reader, but at the same time to explain why. It should look like, “ If we don’t do it now, we won’t be able to act in the future. ” If your sentence cuts the flow of the whole text, it will not appeal to your reader. If you are having trouble crafting the perfect conclusion for your argumentative essay, you can always pay for essay help from a professional writer to get the job done right.

Now you understand how to write a conclusion for an argumentative essay, but remember to catch up on the whole paper flow and finish it in the same tone. Use the call to action sentence and exit your essay smoothly while giving the readers ideas and making them think about the case. If you can’t, please check our argumentative essay writing services , which can easily tackle the task. Note that by getting it done by a professional, you can learn from examples. Besides, the text can get done in a few hours.

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Mastering The Art Of Writing A Great Conflict Essay

Table of Contents

… But how to write a conflict essay?

This task can become a real stone of stumbling for many students, especially when they write admissions essays.

The practice shows that students tend to describe conflicts in the one-dimensional narrative, where one side of the conflict is depicted as a knight in shining armor and the other side is a complete villain.

Of course, it is the simplest way to manage conflicts (as anyone sees clearly, who is right), however, this approach highlight the inability to give an unbiased assessment of both sides of the conflict.

Here we will cover the essentials of writing such essays and how to avoid the most common mistakes in the conflict papers.

Studying the basics of the conflict essay

What is conflict, and what are its causes? Is it possible to avoid it, and how to solve it? Who are the participants, and is there a possibility for them to have a peaceful order? Here are the main points that should be covered in your text.

But what are you going to write about?

Different vocabularies give so many different definitions of this term that it is so easy to be bamboozled by all these meanings.

• A war of a fight.
• A mental struggle.
• An opposition of persons or forces.
• Anything that sets the character back from achieving a specific goal (in fiction).

That is why it is crucial to read and understand the task before you start writing.

Writing guideline for the essays about conflict

Your journey to the perfect paper should start with the proper investigation:

• What is the type of conflict you are writing about?
• What are its reasons?
• What are the consequences?
• How to solve it?

Taking into consideration all mentioned above, it becomes clear that the disagreement between two people does not limit the type of conflict. It also may cover a conflict between a man and society or nature, or even a fight against self.

And do not forget about the key players: the protagonist and antagonist of the conflict.

As soon as you have defined the central conflicts and leading players, it is time to gather facts that prove this point of view. Arm yourself with a pen and start searching for the evidence of conflict in the literary work, if your task is to cover the conflict depicted in a novel or a poem.

You may use many sources for data collection; however, make sure that they are reliable and relevant. And do not forget to jot down the information about the source for proper referencing; otherwise, using materials without appropriate arrangement will be considered plagiarism.

Carefully analyze gathered material and single out a precise thesis statement that will be the basis of the paper. Later it will become the last sentence of the introduction, but now it is the basis of the outline for your essay on conflict. The basic outline template for such paper will look like this:

• A hook sentence – an interesting fact, question, quote, or anecdote.
• Introduction part that makes readers aware of the conflict.
• Thesis statement.
• 3 body paragraphs , each with one issue of the conflict and several proofs.
• Address whether the conflict was resolved or not.
• You may also discuss the ways of avoiding or solving the conflict.
• The conclusion  should cover the main points of the paper with the rephrasing of a thesis.

Breaking down a personal conflict essay

Two types of conflict can be covered in the essay – personal and internal. Personal, on its turn, can be divided into a conflict between people, or a person and organization, or a person and a state (especially in the countries of the totalitarian regime).

Usually, students prefer to describe their own conflict experience, for example, with parents or peers. In this case, one has to define the purpose of writing as thereon hangs the tone of the text. For example, the aim is to show that there are no right or wrong, but two legitimate points of view.

Then the tone of the paper will be empathic as the writer has the insight into the opposite point of view and there are two sides of every story.

What about an internal conflict essay?

Such essays deal with the psychological conflicts inside one person. Thus, they discuss what happens when we have to do something that is against ethical standards or values, or the clash of logical and emotional response to something.

Here much prominence should be given to the ways of overcoming this conflict and as a result, becoming a better person.

And in both cases, it is necessary to follow these guidelines to improve the quality of the text:

• Pay attention to the task requirements: do not exceed the word limit , arrange the quotes according to the chosen referencing style, format the paper properly.
• Make sure that the paper is plagiarism-free .
• Edit and proofread the text.

Take advantage of a well-written conflict essay example

As they say, seeing once is better than hearing twice. When you look through a top-notch paper written by a professional writer, everything clicks into place.

What is more, you can use such paper as a template for your own paper and as a source of inspiration.

…What’s not to love?

Can’t complete such task in time? Entrust it to the professionals! Save time and energy, while your flawless paper will be ready for you in no time!

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How to Write an Essay on Conflict

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In both real life and in fiction, conflict describes an enduring struggle between two opposing forces. Whether you're watching a cartoon or reading a serious literary tome, conflict is a key component of plot. Writing an essay on conflict requires a focus, clarity, and an understanding of the different types of conflict presented in a story.

Identify the Type of Conflict

While most people think of conflict as a fight between two characters, it can be categorized as internal or external or both. Conflict can present itself in four primary ways: externally, as man versus man, man versus society, or man versus nature and internally, as man versus self, as exemplified by the tragic struggle of Shakespeare’s Hamlet trying to avenge his father’s murder.

Find Supporting Evidence

Whether you’re analyzing a piece of literature or a clash between two nations, you’ll first need to identity the two opposing forces that comprise your central argument, and then find evidence to support your claim. For example, if your central conflict is man versus nature – think Sebastian Junger’s “The Perfect Storm” – you’ll want to find specific examples of where the sea rises up against the sailors. As with any analytical essay, analyzing conflicts requires you to look for specific quotes, phrases or parts of dialogue that reinforce your position.

Draft Your Thesis

Once you've figured out your protagonist and antagonist and the type of conflict to address in your essay, narrow your focus and write a concise thesis statement that states the central conflict you plan to address. For example, If you’re analyzing “man versus society” in your essay, such as when Atticus Finch fights against a racist society in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” you could state, "In 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' Harper Lee uses Atticus Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson to both illustrate and combat the rampant racism that has infected his Southern town." Your thesis statement will provide you with a road map for the rest of your paper and will help you decide upon the main points of your paper. Your thesis should be the very last sentence in your introduction.

Start Writing

Once you’ve found your examples and written your thesis, write your first draft. Remember to start your essay with a “hook” – a question, a quote, or a statistic, for example that will introduce the conflict you’ll be analyzing. Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that states a main point, and then support that point with three or four of your examples from your initial research. Repeat this process for each remaining body paragraph. Within the body of the paper, address whether the conflict was resolved, and how. In your conclusion, summarize your main points and restate -- but don’t repeat verbatim -- your thesis.

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Jennifer Brozak earned her state teaching certificate in Secondary English and Communications from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., and her bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Pittsburgh. A former high school English teacher, Jennifer enjoys writing articles about parenting and education and has contributed to Reader's Digest, Mamapedia, Shmoop and more.

Narrative Essay Conclusion | Overview & Examples

Hannah Tate has taught high school English and Language Arts, has guest lectured at the university level, and has over 5 years of experience teaching writing, grammar, and literary studies. She has a BA in French and English, as well as an MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Hannah holds certifications in culturally relevant teaching, restorative practices education, and AP education.

Angela has taught middle and high school English, Business English and Speech for nine years. She has a bachelor's degree in psychology and has earned her teaching license.

Table of Contents

Narrative essay conclusion, narrative essay conclusion examples, lesson summary, how does one conclude an essay.

To conclude an essay, the author should first include a brief summary of the main ideas of the essay. This brief summary should allow for in-depth reflection on those ideas to draw awareness to the main theme of the essay. A conclusion should also bring closure to the essay by combining the essay content to show its larger importance, often referencing information included in the introduction to show change or growth.

What is an example of a good conclusion?

A good conclusion includes a summary of the main points of a narrative essay, referring to key details or events previously mentioned. Using these points, the author should reflect on their larger meaning or impact to present the reader with a central theme for the essay. A good conclusion will also bring closure to the overall story by referencing quotes, ideas, or events introduced earlier to show a coherent progression of ideas throughout the whole essay.

How does one write a good conclusion?

A good essay conclusion should remind the reader of the events of the essay and why those events were important. After summarizing the main events, the author should consider how their perspective, goals, or values changed because of the experience described in the story. A good conclusion will also provide an end to the story by referencing earlier details to show how the ideas presented early in the essay have progressed.

A narrative essay tells a story from the writer's point of view. One of the critical components of a narrative essay is the conclusion or the ending to the story. This conclusion works with all the other essay components, such as the introduction and the body paragraphs. While the introduction offers the reader a preview of an essay, and the body paragraphs convey necessary information, the conclusion combines all of the essay's key details to reflect and convey the theme or central idea. However, it can be difficult to decide how to end a narrative essay with so many pieces of information. A strong narrative essay conclusion will always summarize the essay's main points, offer a reflection on concepts presented or lessons learned, and bring closure to the information presented in the piece.

Summarization

A summary in a narrative essay conclusion offers a repetition of the essay's main points or key events. This reminds the reader of the essay content and clarifies any critical information that may have been overlooked. Summarizing allows an author to reiterate to the reader what parts of the story made the most impact or were most affected by a shift in perspective.

To summarize a conclusion, the author should highlight or note the main events, key concepts, or important thoughts throughout the narrative essay. While writing and editing, it is important to ensure the main ideas or experiences are present in the conclusion.

When writing a conclusion, authors must know what readers should take away from reading the essay. Including reflection in a narrative essay conclusion allows the author to draw insights and describe changes in perspective or action. The conclusion guides the reader to a main theme, idea, or lesson. This process draws on the key events or perspectives discussed throughout the essay and summarized in the conclusion. Where summarizing reminds the reader what happened in the essay, reflection shows why it matters, leading the reader to a central theme or idea reflected throughout the essay.

The end "goal" of the essay is the most important consideration included in a conclusion's reflection. Reflection should offer a consideration of the main details of the essay, with a uniting thought or theme showing their relevance and the overall purpose of the story.

While summarization and reflection wrap up the key concepts of an essay into a central theme, closure ties together that central theme with the overall content of the essay. Proper closure ensures that a reader will understand not only all of the information included but also how that information works together to create the central idea. Often, closure includes referring back to a quote, fact, or thought mentioned in the introduction to show a reader how the information presented in the introduction developed or changed throughout the essay.

There are many ways to structure a conclusion to bring all of the details of an essay together towards closure, but some options include:

• Reflecting on the past with an eye toward the future. How will the experience described in the essay affect a future outlook or actions?
• Expanding the viewpoint. In what ways might the theme of the essay affect the reader or a larger community?
• Showing a change. What influence did the essay's main points have on life choices or other major decisions?
• Calling readers to action. Is there a problem that others must help to fix? How should a community of readers respond to the essay in their own actions?

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• 0:00 The Narrative Essay
• 0:40 The Conclusion
• 1:17 Summarize Main Ideas
• 2:21 Reflection
• 3:22 Provide Closure
• 4:21 Lesson Summary

It is helpful to look at examples of successful narrative essay conclusions. The examples below are from essays written by high schoolers that received an award or influenced a student's college admission.

The first example is an essay published by the New York Times in 2020 as one of eight winners in their Personal Narrative Essay contest. In this essay, author Jeniffer Kim reflects on an experience of feeling ashamed while running errands with her mother, embarrassed by her mother's aging face and old, worn clothing. Her conclusion begins after she describes the sudden realization that all of the things that embarrassed her were a result of her mother's sacrifices:

"Her clothes were tattered and old because she spent her money buying me new ones. She looked so tired and ragged all the time because she was busy working to provide for me. She didn't wear jewelry or scented perfumes because she was just content with me.

Suddenly, Mother was beautiful and extraordinarily wonderful in my eyes.

I was no longer ashamed of her, but of myself.

'Do you want it?' My mom repeated.

'No thanks.'"

Kim concludes her essay by reflecting on what she learned from the experience. She refers back to specific examples of her mom's features that she referenced earlier in the essay, summarizing her main points and describing how her new perspective changed her attitude toward these features. After reflecting on these changes, Kim clearly states the lesson she learned and gives an example of how that lesson changed her choices. In this case, the lesson influenced her to say no to an expensive sweater her mom offered to buy her.

In our second example, Johns Hopkins University shares a recent essay that earned admission for an incoming college student. In this essay, high school author Rozanne compares her experiences of trying new things to the difficult, knotted journey of crocheting a unicorn amigurumi (small crocheted or knitted stuffed animals) and describes the process of learning to embrace the messier sides of learning and growing:

"Through trial and error, the current adventure that I am on resonates the most with me, taking me down the path of service and environmental activism. However, I have learnt that no one path is static, and I can be on more than one path at a time. While I may only be halfway to the proportionate unicorn amigurumi that some others may have already achieved, I still have so much to learn and so much that I want to learn, and so my journey to grow continues."

Rozanne summarizes the main points of her essay, tracing her learning process through the frustration of comparing herself to others and the similarities between her crochet project and her own experiences. She also reflects on her personal growth and the comfort she now feels in taking her own path to learning. Finally, she gives closure by expanding her perspective toward the future, drawing on her past experiences to inspire her openness to learning and a desire to continue growing.

A narrative essay tells a personal story from the author's point of view, and the conclusion of a narrative essay brings an end to that story. A strong conclusion to a story accomplishes this ending by using all of the information included throughout the essay to draw out key information and offer a main idea or theme for the essay. The important parts of a narrative essay conclusion include:

• Summary : briefly restating key information from the introduction and body paragraphs of the essay
• Reflection : employing thorough contemplation to draw insight from the central points of the essay to lead the reader to the essay's main theme
• Closure : connecting previous content in the essay to the main theme and highlighting the essay's overall purpose, often by referring back to details from the story's introduction

A proper conclusion will remind the reader what happened in the essay, why it was important, and how it affected the author's perspective on themselves, their circumstances, or the larger world.

Video Transcript

The narrative essay.

Just mentioning the word 'essay' usually sends students into pangs of panic or despair. Creating a lengthy, well-thought-out piece of writing is no easy task. However, nothing can be more frustrating than writing the whole essay and then struggling with the conclusion.

Imagine you're writing a narrative essay , which is one that tells the story of a personal experience. You have decided to write about your first day of high school. Sure, the actual story will be easy to explain, but how do you end that story in a meaningful way? The rest of this lesson describes how to write a conclusion for a narrative essay.

The Conclusion

Before discussing the strategies to use for a conclusion, let's make sure you have all the other necessary elements. If you're already at the conclusion, you should have a clear introduction , or opening paragraph that presents the topic of the writing. Then you wrote the body , which has all your supporting details and ideas. Never end your essay with the body. Always include a conclusion, which concludes or ends the text.

So how do you write a conclusion for a narrative essay? Once the body is written, what else is there to say? To write a meaningful conclusion, think about the following advice.

Summarize Main Ideas

One of the most common methods for concluding a narrative essay is to write a summary , which includes brief statements of the main points. For a narrative, this does not mean you rewrite the whole story throughout the essay. This would be redundant and deflect from your message. Instead, remind readers of a few of the important events and insights from the essay.

Let's say you really did write a narrative essay describing your first day of high school. To summarize in your conclusion, restate some of the things you learned because of what happened that day. Here's an example of a few sentences you could use.

Overall, this was a very stressful but educational day in my life. I will never forget the anxiety of losing my schedule and how lost I felt wandering the huge building (especially thanks to the prankster seniors). On the other hand, I would never trade this day for anything, as I learned I could deal with problems. It also didn't hurt having friends to help me through.

In these few sentences, you get a sense of how that first day of school went, but also the insight gained from the experience.

If a summary doesn't quite flow with the rest of your essay, you may instead decide to reflect on the story as a whole. A reflection involves thinking deeply about the narrative and giving it thorough consideration.

Think of a reflection as similar to the insight included in a summary, but in a more extreme manner. If you're reflecting on the whole narrative, you need to go into greater depth than just mentioning you learned to solve problems. To take it further, describe what you resolved to do, or come to a conclusion about a major life philosophy. Here are a few sentences that would do that for the sample narrative.

This day taught me so many lessons, like having confidence in myself, being careful who I trust, and accepting help from friends. All these insights, though they may seem obvious to some, changed my whole perspective on life. I no longer wanted to stay where I was safe and comfortable. If I had the right people with me, I could have the confidence to widen my horizons and seek out adventure.

Provide Closure

Whether you choose a summary or reflection, you always want to provide closure for your reader. Closure is a sense of resolution or end. Sometimes writing a summary or a reflection will naturally lead to a final sentence that does provide closure, like in the previous examples. However, sometimes it is more difficult.

If you struggle to provide closure for your narrative, revisit your opening. Most students use a common method for an introduction, like a famous quote or a hypothetical question. To provide closure, bring that idea up again. If you used a famous quote about life lessons, give a new perspective on that quote in your conclusion. If you asked 'When does a person really become a grownup?', then answer that question. It may sounds something like this:

I know that by 3pm on that first day of high school, I was on my way to becoming a grownup.

Whatever introductory strategy you used, revisiting that idea is a very simple way to come full circle as a means of providing closure.

To review, a narrative essay is one that tells the story of a personal experience. All essays should have three elements: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

Here are several methods for writing a conclusion for a narrative essay. You can summarize main ideas by briefly restating the events or insights from the essay. Or create a reflection by giving in-depth considerations on what has been learned or observed. However, you should always strive to provide closure by relating back to an idea from the introduction to express a resolution or end. When writing a conclusion, consider these three strategies to help create a finish that will be remembered by your readers.

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Essays About Conflict: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

Writing about disagreements between two or more groups is a challenge. To help you write this topic, see our examples and prompts for essays about conflict.

Conflict is a clash between two parties, often because of religious, social, or political disagreements. The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine began in early 2014 and is an example of armed conflict. It affects the citizens, economy, tourism, and other sectors of the two countries, with impacts reaching other areas of the world.

In literature, conflict is an integral part of fictional stories that justifies characters’ actions and keeps readers engaged. Conflict is also a part of our everyday lives; from disagreements with family members to arguments with friends, we’ve all experienced conflict at one time or another. Since conflict is a sensitive topic, a critical rule in writing conflict essays is to always rely on factual evidence.

5 Essay Examples

1. why is conflict important by anonymous on studymoose.com, 2. analysis on conflict perspective in titanic by anonymous on edubirdie.com, 3. conflicts of difference in religion in the middle east by jennifer logan, 4. conflicts in relationship by james taylor, 5. workplace conflict by lindsey latoya, 1. the nature, type, and causes of conflict, 2. how achieving goals promotes intrapersonal conflict, 3. conflicts between nations then and now, 4. karl marx’s theory of conflict, 5. conflict: intrapersonal vs. interpersonal, 6. terrorism, conflict, and the tourism industry, 7. the influence of culture on conflicts.

“… Conflict is a big part of the story and it makes the story interesting. Without conflict, the story seems plain and there’s no flare to get people to want to read it or enjoy it. Some authors use man against himself, man against nature, man against society, and man against man.”

This essay explains why conflict is integral for stories, mentioning that it makes a literary piece exciting enough to maintain the readers’ attention. The author uses Richard Connell’s “ The Most Dangerous Game ” to prove their point and delves into relevant scenes demonstrating different conflicts. For example, the scene where the main character fights against the big waves to reach the island for safety exemplifies the conflict of Man against Nature.

“The film is an excellent example of the perspective of conflict, every scene is thoughtful, and reflects the discrimination and exploitation that the working class society faces.”

The author offers several citations to support their claim that the 1997 Titanic film is more than a romantic tragedy. Putting Rose and Jack’s love story aside, the movie also depicts the differences between social classes that link them to conflict theory. According to the founder of this theory, the leading cause of conflicts is the unequal distribution of power and resources among people.

The essay brings up several film segments that cement these differences, such as the standard rule of “women and children first” when evacuating people during a disaster. Although the tragedy claimed the lives of both lower and upper-class men, the movie conveys an important message that everyone will suffer, regardless of class, in times of calamity.

“The Middle East has been in a state of turmoil since the early 1990’s. Conflicts arose from differences in religion, control over territories, and uneven political distribution. These conflicts were not just between countries, but also within individual countries.”

Although this essay doesn’t reveal the root cause of conflicts in the Middle East, it shows the magnitude of the impact of these fights caused by religious differences, territorial disputes, and political inequality. Logan explains that government instability in the Middle East makes it possible for various terrorist to express their grievances and desires through violence.

“As you start your married life, know that conflicts are a must and communication is the key to solving such issues. When married people see the need to manage interpersonal conflicts rather than ignoring them, their marriage becomes functional and happy.”

Couples usually avoid conflicts in their relationships, but Taylor knows it’s inevitable. A relationship without interpersonal conflict can become weak and often leads to separation. He believes that people who ignore problems to avoid conflicts with their partners develop negative emotions that destroy love. Taylor explains that bringing one’s gender and culture into the conversation is the key to resolving disputes, as it prevents miscommunication and demonstrates equal power.

“By better understanding how conflict arise, and practicing handling such conflict in an assertive way, it can become far less intimidating and be an aspect of work you can learn to manage rather than have it manage you.”

Latoya’s essay focuses on how Chinese people avoid conflicts to promote peace and avoid discord, especially workplace disagreements. She describes workplace conflict as work-related or personal tension between two or more forces with differing values ​​and perspectives.

Latoya mentions three techniques to clear up these issues: stimulating, controlling, and resolving and eliminating disputes. Ultimately, the author believes that every manager must maintain emotional distance and focus on conflict resolution by listening, empathizing, and guiding members who have conflicts.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

7 Prompts for Writing Essays About Conflicts

Conflict is diverse and includes essential features that need to be discussed. For this prompt, focus on the conflict in its universality and explain the four major types of conflict. Identify and explain the causes of various conflict categories. Then, give real-life cases of each so the readers can understand and relate to these examples. You might be interested in these essays about cause and effect and essays about curiosity .

Various factors are considered to find the root cause of conflicts. This prompt focuses on elements that promote intrapersonal conflicts, such as frustration, stress, anxiety, and insecurity. 

Tell your readers about a specific situation where the desire to achieve a goal made you feel various negative emotions. Then share what conflict management style you used to resolve this conflict and peacefully achieve your goals.

Our history is filled with strife between groups rallying to support what they believe is right. Such as the case of World War II, which claimed 35 to 60 million lives. In this essay, write about historical and current conflicts and explain their origins. Then, examine the efforts made by past and present governments to resolve these disputes, including the positive or negative impacts of these conflicts on the world at large.

To give credence to Karl Marx ’s Theory of Conflict, introduce him by speaking about his background and accomplishments. Then, refocus on Conflict Theory’s meaning, importance, and how it’s applied to understand society. Offer studies and cases that prove Conflict Theory’s existence. Then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using this theory to understand and resolve disagreements.

Intrapersonal conflict refers to disputes within yourself, while interpersonal conflict concerns misunderstandings with others. In your essay, compare and contrast these two types of conflict and present common situations where these would occur. 

For example, interpersonal conflict could be a disagreement with a coworker, whereas intrapersonal conflict could be an internal struggle with your emotions. Then, add tips on how individuals should respond to these conflicts to avoid further damage. You might also like these essays about stress and articles about attitude .

Terrorism is urged by unfair treatment and different beliefs. Tourism is one of the industries most affected when terrorism occurs in a particular area or country. Use this prompt to discuss the typical impacts of terrorism on a location’s travel and tourism industry. Include reliable articles that report on tourism’s decline after the emergence of terrorism and conflicts.

Conflict usually emerges due to cultural differences between individuals or communities. In your essay, speak about how culture plays a vital role in instigating and mitigating conflicts. For example, the American Civil War occurred because of cultural conflicts because of different views on slavery. Look into past cultural conflicts such as these for a compelling historical essay.

If you need help picking your next essay topic, check out our guide on writing an essay about diversity .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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How to write a conclusion to an essay

Part of English Discursive, persuasive and informative writing

• A conclusion is the final idea left with the reader at the end of an essay.
• A conclusion should link back to the essay question and briefly restate your main points .
• It could also include a final thought or reflection to highlight the significance of the topic.

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Learn how to reflect on your main points in a conclusion to an essay

If you think of your essay as a type of argument, persuading the reader to a particular point of view, then the conclusion can be a powerful way of bringing together the most important aspects of your argument.

Link back to the question

Keep your conclusion focused by linking back to the question, title, statement or topic of the essay. This can be achieved by using key words from the essay question.

Summarise the main points

In the conclusion, you should not simply repeat what you have said in the rest of the essay, but aim to reinforce these key ideas by briefly summarising your main points. One way to do this is to look back at all the topic sentences from the paragraphs in your essay and bring them together.

Your conclusion should leave the reader thinking about the significance of the whole topic. It is a good idea to include a final thought or reflection .

How to find the right angle for an essay

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How to use sources in an essay

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How to carry out essay research and note-making

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OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE MCC WRITING CENTERS

The Perfect Ending: Concluding the Narrative Essay

Concluding a narrative essay can be a challenge for experienced and beginning writers alike. Writers often fall into the trap of tying the narrative up too  neatly, telling the readers what they are supposed to take away from their story instead of letting the reader come to their own conclusions. Study a few essays from some of the great writers and notice how they conclude their stories. Often the ending to their narratives is left ambiguous; the reader isn’t exactly sure how everything will turn out. The reader should be left with a sense of closure, without being told how or what to feel. 

Conclude with an Image

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Show, don’t tell”? Showing an image puts a visual in the reader’s mind, an effective way to conclude without telling too much. Showing an image prevents you from telling  your feelings, which, in most cases, you want to avoid. In the essay “Buckeye,” Scott Russell Sanders uses the image of a grazing deer to conclude his narrative:

. . . within a few paces of a grazing deer, close enough to see the delicate lips, the twitching nostrils, the glossy, fathomless eyes.

This lyrical conclusion comes from “Bathing,” as writer Kathryn Winograd shows the last moments of her bath:

The wind sings through the window like a siren, and the steam floats from my skin like milk.

Conclude in the Action

Show yourself in action. Move. Do something, anything, to avoid telling the reader how happy, or sad, or hopeful you are in the end. Look at something, and walk away, as Edward Hoagland does in “The Courage of Turtles”: But since, short of diving in after him, there was nothing I could do, I walked away.

Or look at something, and become mesmerized. A chapter from the classic memoir, Stop Time by Frank Conroy, “Yo-Yo Going Down, a Mad Squirrel Coming Up,” shows a young Conroy as he watches a girl through a window:

That same night, hidden in the greenery under the window, I watched a naked girl let down her long red hair.

Conclude with Dialogue

Dialogue can be tricky to conclude with, but can work if it avoids a message or moral. You’ll only want to use this concluding technique if it has been maintained in the narrative; you probably don’t want to throw in spoken word if we haven’t heard anyone speak up until that point.

David Sedaris, in his essay, “Cyclops,” ends with the voice of his father, who is the main character in this essay: “I don’t know where you got it from, but in the end, it’s going to kill you.”

The following brief reply, taken from Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter,” shows an image, followed by unquoted dialogue. Beard uses italics instead:

Around my neck is the stone he brought me from Poland. I hold it out. Like this? I ask. Shards of fly wings, suspended in amber. Exactly , he says.

Another example below comes again from Scott Russell Sanders, this from “Cloud Crossing,” as his toddler son babbles:

“Moon,” he is piping from the back seat, “moon, moon!”

Conclude by Reflecting

When used well, reflection is a great way to convey feelings without telling the reader how you felt – or how they should feel. Reflection offers the writer’s thoughts about what is happening or has happened. Reflection can include thoughts about the moment or thoughts looking back, about the experience. Reflection can add clarity, as we see the writer thinking through the experience. This concluding moment is from James Baldwin’s, “Notes of a Native Son”:

. . . I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

Bret Lott, in his short essay, “Brothers,” reflects on childhood memories of his family, taking him into the present with his own two sons:

What I believe is this: That pinch was entry into our childhood; my arm around him, our smiling, is the proof of us two surfacing, alive but not unscathed. And here are my own two boys, already embarked.

In Conclusion

When writing your own conclusion, think about what you want your readers to take away from your story. Then think about how best you can show it. You seldom can go wrong with images. Dialogue is a great way to let a character have the last word. Ending with reflection, sharing thoughts or feelings, works when a bit more needs to be said. Think about what feeling, emotion, or question you want to leave your readers with, the take-away, then choose the type of conclusion that best suits the narrative. It’s not unusual to actually write the conclusion first, and it often serves as a road map to get the narrative where it needs to go. Taking time to carefully craft a conclusion can make or break your narrative.

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How to Resolve Conflict in Workplace Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Theoretical background, causes of conflicts in the workplace, impacts of workplace conflict, handling conflicts in the workplace, nature and solutions of workplace conflicts, recommendations, reference list.

The inevitability of conflicts within an organization suggests that organizational leaders need to embrace them rather than avoid them. Thus, although there are many ways of dealing with conflicts at workplaces, such as collaboration, compromise, competing, avoidance, and accommodation, any strategy that emphasizes leaving conflicts unaddressed is inappropriate.

Conflicts often produce a negative implication on the performance of an organization (Bagshaw, 2004). Since the principal goal of organizational leadership is to look for mechanisms of resolving challenges, which may hinder the performance of an organization so that it delivers value to its owners (shareholders), conflict avoidance constitutes a risky approach to conflict management.

Organizations comprise people from different cultural, professional, racial, age, and other demographic backgrounds. Where people are segregated along these diversity differences, cultural conflicts arise. This suggests that managers and leaders within organizations encounter immense challenges in seeking effective strategies for recruitment, training, developing, and retaining the most talented personnel in an organization characterized by immense workforce diversities.

These challenges become even more pronounced as many organizations endeavor to engage in global businesses as a measure of increasing their competitive advantage. The more diverse the workforce is, the higher the risks of workplace conflicts associated with diversity differences. However, organizations gain from higher workforce innovation and creativity potential upon adopting effective strategies for handling this diversity.

Defining Workplace Conflicts

In a healthy organization, conflicts are predictable. Workplaces bring people from different cultural backgrounds. Such people have different opinions and views towards various issues encountered in an organization’s daily activities. Such different opinions and views create points of parity and disparity. The disparities lead to conflicts. Bacal (1998, p. 8) defines workplace conflict as “issues that generate frequent expressions of emotions, frustration, and anger.”

This suggests that whenever two or more people work together, they disagree on strategies for accomplishing some desired outcomes. Such disagreements can be either constructive or destructive in an organization. In fact, Bacal (1998) refers to destructive conflicts as ugly clashes, while constructive disagreements are good organizational conflicts. While it is impossible to eliminate workplace conflicts, destructive conflicts are highly undesirable. They should be kept at minimal levels.

Organizations, individuals, and even work teams require constructive conflict for them to grow. Engaging in opposing discussions, especially on mechanisms of accomplishing certain outcomes, creates opportunities for “thinking and doing things that can be useful to everyone” (Bacal, 1998, p.8).

In this sense, the outcomes of decisions made following engagements in constructive conflicts are in favor and accommodative of all key stakeholders’ interests within an organization. Destructive conflicts make people in an organization uncomfortable.

In some situations, escalated conflicts have the implication of compelling people to quit (Bagshaw, 2004). Organizations that experience destructive conflicts also encounter challenges of “…lower morale, lower productivity, higher turnover, and more employee burnout” (Bacal, 1998, p.8). This suggests that organizational leaders and managers should focus on eliminating destructive conflicts while encouraging constructive conflicts in an effort to build higher-performing organizations.

Workplace conflicts are broadly subdivided into caustic and productive conflicts. Destructive conflicts often involve personality clashes. This occurs when people fail to get along with one another. This type of conflict in the workplace is often fuelled by emotion and perceptions about somebody else’s motives and character. For example, a team leader jumps on someone for being late because they view the team member as lazy and disrespectful.

The team member sees the team leader as out to ‘get’ them because they are not one of the ‘favored children.’ The second type occurs when people view decisions and ideas articulated to a given job or task differently. Conflicting ideas become productive in the event that parties in conflicts have the willingness to engage in brainstorming sessions (Bacal, 1998). In such situations, compromised ideas are, at times, better in enhancing the success of an organization compared to an original idea.

As a cause of workplace conflicts, as hinted above, personality clashes initiate disputes regarding certain business practices, which then skyrocket into mutual loathing (Collinsin & Rourke, 2005). In some cases, two people may not like each other right from the beginning due to diversity differences and other personality differences.

This claim implies that workplace diversity may be a big contributor to conflicts within an organization. Personality clashes also contribute to workplace disputes, which may escalate to become conflicts since people possess different beliefs, values, and approaches to handling problems. When people fail or have difficulties in appreciating and embracing other people’s work methods, clashes emerge.

Some conflicts within an organization can emerge due to a lack of trust in the HR to handle differences between two disagreeing employees. The situation makes the parties engaged in conflict expand their differences when permitted to take matters into their hands. Therefore, HRM deserves to evaluate the circumstances that may cause disregard the consideration of the roles of HRM in conflict resolution by employees.

Gramberg (2005, p. 94) supports this position by further claiming, “interpersonal skills are important to managers with regard to building workplace trust and cooperation from staff members who are collectively accountable for furthering business goals.” In fact, one of the roles of management in an organization is to ensure a peaceful environment characterized by workforce collaboration in the effort to meet an organization’s goals, mission, and aims.

Failure of employee collaboration may give rise to workplace conflicts. Other causes of conflicts within workplaces include poor or inadequate communication, which gives rise to misunderstandings, and limited organizational resources, which lead to competition and conflicting needs. Poor performance in tasks that are allocated to employees may also lead to conflicts when some tasks with higher effort input demands or when poorly completed tasks are reallocated to other employees.

Globalized organizations embrace diversity in their workforce. This strategic initiative is impaired by the belief that employing people from diverse backgrounds gives an organization a competitive advantage. For instance, an organization develops the capacity to tap and benefit from a wide range of talents and knowledge bases (Johnson & Keddy, 2010). This means that an organization is able to innovate and create a wide range of products, which translates into increased profitability while traded in the global markets.

Focusing on diversity as a strategic initiative for an organization delivers gains in terms of enhanced growth through an increment of product range due to innovation that is brought by people possessing different capabilities working together. However, it is crucial to note that diversity also brings together people from different cultural backgrounds (Gramberg, 2005).

The above assertion implies that diversity has the impact of creating cultural conflicts in workplaces. Institute of Leadership and Management (2007) confirms how the HRM is important in resolving such conflicts since it helps to create a common organizational culture by helping employees understand that different people have different abilities and beliefs and that these differences should not be permitted to influence the way people relate with one another.

Alternatively, diversity differences need to avoid personality clashes within workplaces. The HR, being charged with ensuring that employees work in harmony without conflicting situations that lead to personality clashes, should deploy diversity to enhance success by treating any conflict arising from cultural differences and frictions as an act of indiscipline and negligence to comply with an established organizational culture.

While this role may be well established in the outline of the mandates of the HRM in an organization, communication may hinder the success of the initiatives deployed by HR to curb personality conflicts.

Studies by Bacal (1998) and Lee (2008) identify communication as a major cause of workplace conflicts. Leaders for dynamic organizations appreciate the importance of effective communication, particularly while working in an environment of consistent change.

Communication has the ability to deliver tangible products as opposed to being a soft component of leadership roles. Improving the satisfaction of consumers, enhancing the quality of service delivery and product quality, and enhancing retention together with the satisfaction of employees depend on effective communication (Lee, 2008). These aspects also constitute the ingredients of workplace conflicts.

In an organization that employs people from diverse backgrounds, communication is the tool deployed to harness individual differences of employees to align them to a common organizational culture guided by the aims, missions, goals, and objectives of the organization (Johnson & Keddy 2010). This suggests that communication is also important in the effective resolution of employee conflicts. Conflicts influence employee productivity. Hence, the performance of an organization is also affected negatively.

Poor communication often results in resistance to change, especially where the persons working in an organization consider the changes being implemented as threats to their jobs and personal excellence.

For instance, while personnel at the headquarters of an organization may be fighting for standardization of products produced by an organization to ease supply chain and logistics challenges, workers at departmental levels of various products may be opposed to such an endeavor. This disparity creates destructive workplace conflicts between an organization and employees at different hierarchical levels.

Inadequate communication at the intra-organizational levels may result in different perceptions of ideas and strategies that will enhance organizational success in the market (Bacal, 1998). This claim implies that conflicts in ideology minimize the opportunities for channeling organizational energy to the implementation of ideas and strategies that will enhance the increment of productivity of an organization.

Communicating both adequately and effectively is crucial for the elimination of workplace conflicts. Institute of Leadership and Management (2007) confirms that the availability of adequate and unambiguous information helps employees to collectively support effectively while doing what is within their capacity to ensure that an organization succeeds in the direction set by leaders and managers.

In this sense, the goal of an effective communication program within an organization is to foster a change in employees’ behaviors and perceptions toward other employees, which may trigger personality clashes.

Effecting the desired change in an organization through communication takes different forms. It may involve the harmonization of people’s attitudes or alteration of work processes in an effort to support the organization’s success by eliminating the clash of ideas in the manner of executing various job elements, which may be destructive.

Effective communication entails communicating strategies for success through translating the essential business objectives and goals into terms that employees can understand easily (Johnson & Keddy, 2010).

In response to such communication, employees become engaged and aligned in readiness to work collectively toward driving organizational success. In fact, when communication fails, misunderstanding arises, resulting in the failure of employees to execute tasks as desired by managers and leaders. This translates into workplace conflicts between managers, supervisors, and leaders with employees.

The human resource arm of an organization has an immense responsibility to ensure that top talent within an organization is retained. HRM is the core competency of an organization whose objective is to handle issues related to employees.

Such issues include enhancing motivation, enhancing job satisfaction, laying remuneration structures, giving advice on promotions, and aiding an organization to acquire top talent through selection and recruitment. Addressing issues that result in poor performance of employees, such as poor job satisfaction, calls for the HRM to establish correlations for the challenges. Lee (2008) identifies ugly workplace conflicts as one of the correlates of poor job satisfaction.

As a core competency for an organization, HRM engages in tasks such as training and development and managing conflicts within organizations through conflict resolution. Conflicts that HRM enhances their management are between an organization and employees or between employees and other employees. These conflicts produce both positive and negative impacts on an organization.

Conflicts may have the impact of creating opportunities for organizational growth. Bacal (1998) supports this impact by adding that a good organizational conflict entails providing the means for learning and setting mechanisms for fostering employee cooperation.

Collins and Rourke (2005) maintain that conflicts may create an opportunity for employees to learn strategies for effectively handling similar conflicts in the future.

While workplace conflicts may emanate from poor communication, conflicts can provide a means through which people become aware and/or understand the various issues that may translate into future conflicts.

Through this understanding, people are able to develop honesty and transparent organizational communication channels (Lee, 2008). Different ideas and angles of view on a given issue that may be influencing an organization have the impact of creating well-brainstormed ideas, which aid an organization in achieving better performance levels.

Organizational performance is a function of many variables. Some of these variables are workforce morale, employee turnover rates, productivity, and employee burnout. Bacal (1998) confirms that these variables correlate directly with workplace conflicts.

As revealed before, one of the common causes of workplace conflicts is workforce diversity, especially in terms of professional capabilities and cultural differences. This assertion implies that effective management of workforce diversity can improve workforce productivity, enhance workforce engagement, and foster the reduction of staff absenteeism and workforce turnover.

HRM plays a central role in handling all issues negatively influencing employees’ productivity in the workplace. In case of ugly conflicts, diversity implies leading to conflicts, which impair employees’ productivity by lowering their work morale. However, an organization will benefit if good organizational conflicts arise from diversity differences.

Google provides an important benchmark on how positive conflicts of workforce diversity can enhance the performance of an organization. Google Company gains from the varied viewpoints of its diverse workforce in effect that such a workforce provides increased problem-solving capacities and enhanced creativity levels.

In this context, it is inferable that proper management of good organizational conflicts involving exchange and disagreement on various ideas akin to diversity differences in talent and creativity levels has positive impacts. For instance, the creativity and innovativeness of a diverse workforce have made Google gain via establishing a central position in the competitive market.

The goal of managing workforce conflicts is to ensure that conflicts do not negatively impact organizations’ success. Labor turnover constitutes one of the negative impacts of workplace conflicts. In many organizations, labor turnover is deployed as a measure of performance. It measures the decisions of the worker to remain committed to the work of an organization (Bacal, 1998). Employee turnover is divided into two main types: voluntary and involuntary turnover.

Voluntary turnover occurs when employees decide to quit employment out of their own will to engage in other activities, such as self-employment, but not because the job was dissatisfying. In the case of involuntary turnover, people are compelled by circumstances to quit their employment. Such circumstances include poor pay, perception of exploitation, conflicts with other employees, and work-personal life conflicts, among other reasons.

Labor turnover is controllable or unavoidable in some situations. For instance, where workplace conflicts cause labor turnover, proper management of such conflicts can control and avoid them. Where this does not happen, the impacts of labor turnover due to destructive workplace conflicts have serious consequences on the performance of an organization both in the short and long term.

McClure (2004) contends that high turnover in organizations leads to increased costs of recruitment together with training of new employees to fill the gap left by the outgoing employees. Turnover is one of the issues that organizations seeking to exploit cost competitiveness as a strategy of success should address proactively. Addressing it proactively calls for organizations to deal with its causation, such as workplace conflicts.

The best approach to the management of organizational conflicts encompasses developing strategies for their prevention (Wisinski, 2003). However, the occurrence of conflicts indicates potential problems that negatively impact employees’ productivity, such as low motivation.

They also create opportunities for establishing good relationships among work teams and individuals when arbitration, mediation, and reconciliation efforts succeed. Considering that good relationship among employees is the foundation for higher work team productivity, mild destructive workplace conflicts in this sense can help build better-performing work teams.

In practice, employees are not able to handle misunderstandings with their peers in an effective way before such misunderstandings have translated to personality clashes. The realization of this argument calls for the management to step in to look for mechanisms for handling conflicts (Myatt, 2012; Cloke & Goldsmith, 2005).

One such mechanism is adopting disciplinary measures for employees engaging in unproductive conflicts. However, intra-communication and inter-communication strategies are vital before disciplinary action is adopted.

This move calls for HR managers to possess good interpersonal and intrapersonal communication skills. “These skills are deployed to help harness employees’ personal and social skills that are necessary for conflict resolution” (Masters & Albright, 2002, p.117).

Indeed, interpersonal communication comprises an essential skill in conflict management within an organization in the effort to diffuse various stressful environments together with hostile situations, which may create fertile grounds for the development of conflicts (Myatt, 2012, para.8).

In organizational settings, the emergence of conflicts is hard to prevent. According to Gramberg (2005), the main challenge is how to resolve workplace conflicts. To reduce incidences of defiant behaviors, effective management of employees entails effectively communicating the rules and procedures of punishing employees in case of breach of the established rules and regulations that define the codes of ethics and organizational culture.

Since any grievances and disciplinary actions within an organization begin with clear and precise communication of the implications of an employee’s acts of misconduct, interpersonal and intrapersonal communication skills are an important requirement for a manager who endeavors to prepare, conduct, and conclude grievance and disciplinary cases effectively.

Scholars have developed many models to describe various mechanisms of resolving conflicts within an organization. Thomas-Kilmann proposed one such model. According to his model, conflicts can be handled using five main styles: accommodating, shunning, working together, rivalry, and compromising.

Accommodation involves the decision by an organization to cooperate with parties in conflict to the highest possible degree. Often, one party works against its desired goals and/or outcomes. The strategy works well when one party in conflict has a better solution to a given problem (Masters & Albright, 2002). It helps in building strong ties between two or more parties in conflict.

Alternatively, one may choose to ignore the need to resolve a given conflict. This approach entails the resolution of conflicts by avoiding them. This style works well when the effective solution is costly, when one perceives that he or she has minimal probabilities for winning, or when an issue in conflict is trivial. However, avoiding is not an effective strategy in the long term (Bagshaw, 2004: Bacal, 1998).

The collaboration includes partnering to follow a goal that another party pursues. During the collaboration, an effort is made to accommodate all people’s ideas for synthesis to develop a single superior idea for resolving a conflict.

Such an idea also needs to consider all points of agreement and disagreement between the collaborating parties (Bagshaw, 2004). This way, it becomes possible to break away from the win-lose strategy to explore the win-win strategy. This approach requires an incredibly high capacity to trust one another in the development of a superior idea for the resolution of a conflict.

The approach is opposed to the competing technique in which the focus is on the win-lose approach to conflict resolution (Gramberg, 2005). Competing approaches work well in times of dire need to make quick decisions. In the case of compromising, parties in conflict focus on a lose-lose strategy. The approach is best suited whenever parties in conflict pursue goals and objectives that cannot converge.

Lee (2008) asserts that managers should engage in communication with employees and other organizational stakeholders for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is attributed to the expensiveness of ineffective communication in an organization. In modern workplaces, communication in management is important since workplace environments continue to be sophisticated.

They also involve complex interaction processes among all individual units that make the whole organization. Consequently, collaboration capability enables an organization to gain from a diverse creative workforce that requires ardent and unambiguous communication (Lee, 2008). This way, it becomes possible to handle workplace conflicts that are attributed to poor and inadequate communication.

Upon establishing the issues that attract conflicts between various employees and/or an organization, the focus shifts to establishing mechanisms of healing the wounds caused by a conflict.

In this process, Gramberg (2005) identifies reconciliation, arbitration, and mediation as important techniques for handling workplace conflicts. Reconciliation involves the admission of wrongdoing followed by forgiveness. Mediation involves bringing two parties in conflict together through a third party by revisiting the series of events or disputes that led to the conflict.

This step is then followed by suggesting codes of behavior or reactions that should have prevented the conflict. In each case, the parties in conflict identify their own mistakes and put effort into ensuring they would not repeat the same mistakes in future workplace interaction processes (Gramberg, 2005). Arbitration through a third non-partisan party, including a court, becomes important where conflicts have translated to personal injuries and/or paying off damages is necessary.

From the discussions in the literature review section, workplace conflicts have both negative and positive impacts. Even ugly conflicts may also have some aspects of positive impacts if managed effectively. Managing workplace conflicts requires the deployment of various techniques and approaches. From the Thomas-Kilmann model for conflict management, the techniques involve avoiding, challenging, teamwork, negotiation, and accommodation.

In the context of the Gramberg (2005), arbitration, reconciliation, and mediation can suffice as solutions to workplace conflicts. The appropriateness of each of these solutions depends on the cause of conflicts encountered by an organization and the desired outcomes. For instance, organizations seeking to have a motivated workforce in a bid to enhance their productivity in the long term will seek solutions that have long-term outcomes in the resolution of employee conflicts.

Based on the literature review, one of the causes of conflicts in the workplace is the allocation of tasks that are impartially done by poorly performing employees to higher performing employees after they (higher performing employees) have completed their allocated work. A possible solution to this challenge encompasses the deployment of performance-based pay systems.

Performance-based reimbursement is a system of payment in which people are rewarded or paid equivalently for their amount of work or output. A good example of this payment mechanism is the payment of salespeople on commission, depending on the number of sales made. Another potential cause of conflicts in an organization is personality clashes. A possible solution involves employing people with diverse personality traits.

When a conflict occurs, accepting it as the status quo followed by its avoidance may be a possible response to workplace conflicts with the anticipation that the conflict will fade (Collinsin & Rourke, 2005). Alternatively, parties in conflicts can work collaboratively to establish a common ground of mutual benefit. This approach can sometimes fail to work, with parties resorting to compromising, accommodation, or competing.

Competing calls for parties to engage in a dialogue such that the best party emerges the winner. The losing party follows the directive issued by the winner. This alternative opposes the compromising option, which advocates for parties in conflict to consider acquiring little gains and/or incur some losses in the effort to establish a middle ground. People wishing to embrace accommodation as an alternative to the resolution of conflicts surrender their demands and needs in the quest to please another party (Gramberg, 2005).

In these five alternatives, parties in conflict may engage in dialogue voluntarily without mediation from a third non-partisan party. Bringing parties in conflict into an agreement may also call for arbitration. In situations where one party admits wrongdoing, reconciliation becomes an important alternative to the solution of workplace conflicts.

Diversity constitutes a major cause of conflicts within an organization. It refers to the myriads of differences existing among people working in an organization concerning parameters such as gender, race, community values, age, sexual affection, income levels, work experience, parental status, religious beliefs, ethnicity, religion, and physical abilities.

Where organizational culture reinforces the significance of diversity differences in contributing to and explaining workplace behaviors, performance levels, stigmatization of abilities of various people, and stereotyping of people from a given cultural background, ugly conflicts are inevitable. A solution to this challenge is developing an organizational culture that embraces workforce differences in line with an organization’s goals, objectives, and mission.

Tackling Conflict: Conflict Management Styles, Implication of Conflict Management Styles, and the Relationship between Conflict Management and Job Satisfaction

Traditionally, many organizations were managed hierarchically through a bureaucratic system in which pay level was a function of an employee’s position in the hierarchy of management. Adopting a performance-based pay system in such organizations entails adopting organizational change. Unfortunately, people generally resist change, especially when the desired change influences them negatively.

Performance-based payment system encompasses one of the changes that may face hefty criticisms from employees, particularly those at senior levels in the hierarchical management protocol. Senior employees whose payment needs adjustment to meet their performance levels are most likely to object to the system when a subordinate who records a high-performance level earns a higher income than they do.

On the other hand, the subordinates will embrace the change. Consequently, implementing performance-based pay systems within an organization may create conflicts between employees, their line managers, and supervisors. Additionally, in an effort to earn higher pay, employees may work at unsafe speeds. This situation is undesired. Thus, this solution is inappropriate since it may introduce other conflicts.

An alternative to implementing performance pay systems involves seeking to resolve workplace conflicts related to personality clashes by employing people of assorted personality traits. While this strategy has the merits of ensuring that people with similar personalities work under similar work environments, it becomes hard to find enough people possessing exactly similar personality traits in large work teams.

For effectiveness in the performance of a work team, diversity in personality traits may also be important, especially where an organization intends to create a work team that engages in constructive conflicts to enhance the brainstorming of ideas. Consequently, this solution is inappropriate since some levels of disagreements in decision-making processes and the manner of contextualization of issues are important in developing the most effective strategies for enhancing organizational performance.

Parties in workplace engage in conflicts due to different opinions. This implies that seeking to compel conflicting people to establish a compromise, accommodation, or collaboration attracts some challenges since none of the parties would be willing to sacrifice his or her self-esteem. Competing is perhaps the best approach for ensuring that a superior party in a conflict wins.

This boosts the self-esteem of the winner but immensely destroys the self-image of the loser. In the case where conflicts involve issues that are directly related to work, the loser suffers low job morale, which may affect his or her satisfaction with the job. This may lead to an intention of turnover or even the actual turnover. The converse of this claim is true for the winning party.

From an organizational dimension, the goal is to enhance the motivation and commitment of all employees in their work commitment. In overall, this suggests that the organization will have lost by deploying competing styles for workplace conflict management. Although the conflicts may be resolved, collaboration may also have similar impacts, just like competition, since one party must surrender to the demands of another party. Avoidance is the most inappropriate alternative.

Diversity management, as an approach to the resolution of workplace conflicts, implies that strategies for managing workforce diversity cuts across different causation elements for conflicts in workplaces. Thus, it can help in the elimination of conflicts that are associated with different levels of expertise, thus leading to a low performance by some employees that will necessitate the incorporation of performance pay-based systems while addressing the issues of personality differences, which may create personality clashes.

It also rhymes well with the concerns of mediation, reconciliation, and arbitration since conflicts that require these mechanisms of conflict resolution are akin to differences among individuals. Diversity management is the most preferred approach in the management of workplace conflicts in globalized organizations.

There are different approaches to solving conflicts. The article recommends a proactive passive approach as opposed to a reactive approach. The recommended proactive passive approach emphasizes handling the causation of conflicts in workplaces effectively. Mediation, arbitration, and reconciliation are reactive since they are deployed after a conflict has already occurred and caused damage to an organization.

Avoiding, competing, collaborating, compromising, and accommodating are equally reactive approaches. The adoption of performance-based pay systems is a recommendable approach to the management of conflicts that are associated with poor performance among some employees. However, they can create more problems and conflicts in the end. Thus, the approach is unsuitable.

The best approach for managing workplace conflicts entails understanding the benefits of adopting a multicultural environment tolerant of diverse workforce. By accomplishing this strategy, organizations would gain immensely in the form of increased productivity of the diverse workforce, hence boosting the profitability of the organization in question.

Incorporating this recommendation requires all management staff members, from top to bottom, to understand workforce diversity’s relevance from moral and business perspectives. Another way of incorporating the recommendation is by altering organizational values to orient people to commit themselves to promoting workforce diversity within the work environment.

A third way of incorporating the recommendation involves the creation of awareness and/or skills that focus on diversity training. This strategy needs to be implemented by managers of organizations in the quest to ensure that workforce socialization is directly congruent with the adopted new values.

In turn, it can increase understanding among people from diverse cultural backgrounds and increase group cohesion. It can also foster the improvement of self-knowledge. When employees embrace the diversity and diversity needs of all their work team members, they can carefully examine their objectives. Through this path, they can understand what is most important to them, thus improving their focus and enhancing their efficiency. This strategy is an essential catalyst for job satisfaction.

Conflict is inevitable in the workplace. It is a reality in every work environment by bringing people from diverse backgrounds together. While people continue to work in teams while caring about the manner their work team members treat them, disagreements will always arise to create conflicts in the workplaces.

Conflicts refer to the various issues emerging in the workplace that create emotions such as anger, discontent, and frustration. Such emotions produce either positive impacts or negative impacts on an organization. For instance, positive impacts may encompass the provision of an opportunity for organizational growth. Negative impacts involve issues such as reduced employee motivation, turnover, low job satisfaction, and reduced employee productivity.

Bacal, R. (1998). Conflict Prevention in the Workplace: Using Cooperative Communication . Winnipeg: Bacal & Associates.

Bagshaw, M. (2004). IRS Managing Conflict in the Workplace . London: Lexis Nexis.

Cloke, K., & Goldsmith, J. (2005). Resolving Conflicts at Work: Eight Strategies for Everyone on the Job (Rev. ed.) . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Collins, D., & Rourke, S. (2005). Managing Conflict and Workplace Relationships . Ohio: Mason.

Gramberg, B. (2005). Managing Workplace Conflict: Alternative Dispute Resolution in Australia . Annandale, N.S. W.: Federation Press.

Institute of Leadership and Management. (2007). Managing conflict in the Workplace . Oxford, Boston: Pergamon Flexible Learning.

Johnson, C., & Keddy, J. (2010). Managing Conflict at Work: Understanding and Resolving Conflict for Productive Working Relationships . London: Kogan Page.

Lee, E. (2008). Communication Network Approaches to Conflict Management at the Workplace and Job Satisfaction . London: Lexis Nexis.

Masters, F., & Albright, R. (2002). The Complete Guide to Conflict Resolution in the Workplace . New York< NY: Amacom.

McClure, L. (2004). Anger and Conflict in the Workplace: Spot the Signs, Avoid the Trauma . San Francisco, SA: Jossey-Bass.

Myatt, M. (2012). 5 Keys of Dealing with Workplace Conflict. Retrieved from < https://www.forbes.com/ >.

Wisinski, J. (2003). Resolving Conflicts on the Job . New York< NY: Amacom.

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What Makes Conflict? How Are Conflicts Resolved?

Couples do best when both partners have strong conflict resolution skills..

Posted November 14, 2012 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

Why Conflict Is Healthy for Relationships By Elizabeth Dorrance Hall Ph.D.

Conflict is a term that refers to situations in which two or more sides appear to be pulling or pushing in opposing directions.. If the participants stay calm and friendly, we might refer to their way of dealing with the conflict as shared problem-solving . If tensions emerge or anger escalates, the terms arguments or fights may be a better fit.

In these sensitive situations, do you sometimes find yourself insisting on what you want? Do you hold back from verbalizing your perspective on some issues for fear that the conflict will erupt into a fight?

This article explains how to address differences, ie, to deal with conflict, in a way that yields satisfaction for everyone involved. This same collaborative conflict resolution strategy can be used at home, at work, with friends, in business, in politics —in any venue where both parties would prefer to convert their conflicts into effective win-win problem-solving.

Where do conflicts emerge?

As I explain in my book From Conflict to Resolution , conflicts can emerge in any of three realms:

(1) within oneself (which therapists refer to as intrapsychic conflict),

(2) between oneself and one or more others, and

(3) between oneself and a circumstance (e.g., illness, financial difficulties).

Often a conflict has aspects in two or even all three of these realms. For instance, If "Joe" feels conflicted about whether to leave his job, he is likely to experience conflicts within himself—his current salary is great and at the same time, the hours are too long. If a loved one wants Joe to stay and he wants to leave his current job, the conflict has become interpersonal. And if Joe develops an illness, what he wants and the realities of what he needs to do to heal his health problem may conflict.

What causes conflicts to yield fights?

Collaborative dialogue skills are essential to the resolution process. Without the necessary skills, adversarial stances, tension, and anger can make a win-win outcome unlikely.

Bickering, arguing, or getting insistent indicate someone who is unskilled at handling conflicts in a collaborative way. So does going silent about your perspective. Talking in an irritated tone of voice, becoming insistent on your way, ignoring what the other person says, blaming, attacking, and using anger to bully others into doing what you want or, heaven forbid, going to war, all indicate collaborative dialogue skill deficits.

Conflict resolution also takes knowledge of the three-step resolution process. Without clarity about these three steps, participants are likely to end up in a tug-of-war for whose way will win and who will lose. This kind of adversarial process gets settled by who has more power, unlike the win-win plan of action that is the goal of collaborative conflict resolution.

How can you tell when there is a conflict afoot?

Emotional discomfort—that is, negative emotions—alert you to the reality that a situation of conflict is occurring.

Any time two or more people need to pick a shared course of action, they are at risk for experiencing conflict. Decisions, therefore, are one danger point .

Similarly, seeing a situation differently and/or wanting different outcomes can also provoke conflict.

Fortunately, there are ways to disagree that prevent conflicts from emerging in these situations. (I write about these in my post " How To Disagree Agreeably. "

The 3 Steps of Collaborative Conflict Resolution

To settle a disagreement without getting mad, sad, or anxious , take the following three steps:

• Recognize that there is a problem that needs to be solved by noting differing ideas of what to do.
• Explore the underlying concerns.
• Create a mutually agreeable solution.

For this 3-step process to proceed effectively, participants need to feel as if they are sitting on the same side of the table facing the problem rather than as opponents sitting across from each other. Sustaining a friendly and cooperative attitude is essential.

What would these steps of conflict resolution look like for addressing a real problem?

Jim and Barbara were a couple in my therapy practice who disagreed about what to do on their summer vacation. Their usual disagreement strategy had been to argue over my, way, no my way until one gave up, gave in, and was left feeling depressed and resentful. Collaborative conflict resolution was new for them.

STEP 1: Note Differing Ideas of What to Do

Recognize that there is a problem that needs to be solved. Usually, that recognition comes when two or more people are each advocating for different action plans.

To begin a process of conflict resolution, Jim and Barbara had to recognize that they had hit a conflict. The conflict had arisen because they need to make a decision together. Becoming irritated, Jim was tempted to continue in bickering mode. Jim responded positively though when I suggested that the rising tension indicated an opportunity to use their new three steps of conflict resolution.

Jim: Let’s take a trip to Peking this summer. I want to travel and explore.

Barbara: (Feeling alarmed) That's what I was afraid you would say. Not me. Travel sounds totally unappealing to me. I'd prefer to just stay home.

Jim : So where do we go from here? If I want to travel and you want to stay home, we're stuck already.

Thus the first step in moving forward toward resolving a conflict consists of both sides saying what is initially on their minds with regard to what they want to do. Both sides speak and both listen to the other, even though what they want seems to be in conflict.

Danger: Participants who at this point head straight for the third step, finding solutions, will find themselves locked in a tug-of-war, a power struggle over whose way will prevail. Far better to note the conflicting ideas and therefore proceed immediately to step two.

STEP 2: Explore the Underlying Concerns.

This second step requires a shift from talking about actions—the solution that each participant has proposed—to exploring the underlying concerns . Concerns are the factors that have motivated each person's initial suggestions. Concerns are desires, fears, and other factors that matter to you in a given situation.

All the concerns, that is, the concerns of both or all the participants, go on one list. Any concern of one party that way becomes a shared concern.

Jim: I was thinking of an exploring vacation because I want to be physically active during our time off. At my job, I sit at my desk all day. On my vacation, I'd like to move around, to walk long distances, to meet new people. Besides, seeing new places and meeting new people feels invigorating, fun.

Barbara: That makes sense to me, that you want physical activity. And I agree that new is often fun. As for me, I want to stay home because I've been working such long hours. I want to rest. I want to relax, slow down, and recuperate. I also would love time to read, since I have so little time to read most of the year.

STEP 3: Create a Mutually Agreeable Solution

Finding solutions can be launched by summarizing aloud all the items on the concerns list.

Each participant then offers a modification of their original suggested solution, or new ideas altogether, so that the plan of action is responsive to their concerns and also to the partner's concerns.

The resolution brings a sense of calm, closure, and mutual satisfaction when a plan of action includes elements responsive to each and all of the underlying concerns of both parties.

Jim: So I want to be able to move around a lot, walk, see new sights, and meet new people. You want to be able to sit still, read, and relax. How about if we go to a beach resort? You can sit and relax on the beach; I can do beach sports like surfing or volleyball and take long suns along the shoreline. You can relax alone in the sun. I can meet the people participating in sports with me. We can go to a place that is new for us, and with a lot of activity options which I would like. That way we could stay in one place which you would prefer. and where you can do activities that are restful for you.

Barbara: Sounds perfect! Sometimes I'd be glad too to go for long walks with you. And I would be okay with flying to a new place if once we arrive I can mostly just sit on the beach. That actually sounds even better than staying home.

Note that even though this couple's eventual solution was different from the initial suggestions of either of them, because the plan of action was responsive to the concerns of both people, it felt good—better even for both of them than either of their first ideas. That is, the solution was “win-win”—not because one or both of them "got their way," but because the solution was responsive to the underlying concerns of both of them.

Conclusions

While the dilemma above was a relatively simple conflict to resolve, the same three steps apply to any conflict, simple or complex. Note too that the three steps described above apply to solving conflicts that have occurred within any of the three potential conflict realms: within one person’s wishes, fears, or values; between people; or between people and difficult circumstances.

Staying on pathways of collaborative communication keeps the conflict resolution process moving forward. Communication errors like blame, criticism or dismissive listening can throw the process off track. Similarly, slippage into a tone of voice that conveys a negative attitude—for example, contempt, irritation, sarcasm, or anger—also risks triggering a stance of adversarial conflict.

Collaborative dialogue plus cooperative conflict resolution skills make people more effective and productive at work and enable them to live more harmoniously as families, They create a peaceful and harmonious way of living in the world. Sound worth a try?

To learn more about how to handle conflict in ways that enhance your relationships, check out Dr. Heitler's books and website .

Susan Heitler, Ph.D ., is the author of many books, including From Conflict to Resolution and The Power of Two . She is a graduate of Harvard University and New York University.

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Interpersonal conflict is an inevitable part of our lives in all aspects of our lives. However, many people avoid it altogether or otherwise handle it in ways that are counterproductive for themselves and others. Effectively dealing with conflict goes a long way in determining success especially when it can have a

How Do You Agree With The Igbo People's View During Conflict

For example, my sister and I used to fight all the time. Eventually, I had to learn to respond in the right way. I have to make sure my head is on straight and listen to her point of view. After I do this, I can then reason with her because she has gotten all of her feelings out. When I reason with her it is likely that I might be able to resolve the conflict or even when the argument. Listening to other people’s view during conflict is very important. Last year after Turner and I broke up he decided that he was going to be rude to me and create some more conflict between us. We already did not agree on some things and had opposing viewpoints. He just wanted to make the situation worse. During that I time, I chose to not engage is his game. I just responded to him nicely and smiled when I saw him. I didn’t every retaliate and try to get back at him. It is not surprising that method worked. At the end of the day I was always the one who was happy and he was the one in a bad mood. Eventually the game became boring to him and he quit. Clearly, having a positive attitude can a person become successful during conflict.

Conflict Self Analysis Paper

As individuals, we all have different approaches to deal with conflict. We also all have an order of preference among the styles that influence our communication choices. In this activity, I have taken a self-analysis assessment that identified the preference order I use with my conflicts. I learned that there are five basic orientations for handling conflict and those are avoidance, competition, compromise, accommodation, and collaboration. The assessment today showed me my conflict style preference and the tactics I use for handling conflict. Today, I will write in deeper details about my results of this self-analysis.

My Conflict, Spouse Behavior, And Resolution Win-Win

Conflict is an expressed struggling between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scare resources, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals. A conflict is inevitable meaning it cannot be avoided by others when it comes to disagreeing with one person to another to make an agreement. Every relationship will have a certain conflict with each other, rather they are wrong or not. In this paper, I will talk about my conflict about myself and my boyfriend. My three main points that I will talk about are being trigger, spouse behavior, and a result of my relationship. What I want to gain in this paper is understanding more about the issues when arguing, but in a soft spoken way to each other and

Interactive Process Of Conflict Analysis

Rahim (2011) defined conflict as a social interactive process that involves disagreements or dissension within or between individual, group or organization. Describing conflict as an interactive process does not mean that there are no possibilities of intraindividual conflict. It is clear that at times a person might interact with himself or herself. Although the definition of conflict is varied, there are four elements that commonly describe conflict. First, conflict comprises opposing interests between individuals or group. Second, the opposed interest must be recognized for a conflict to exist between two or more social entities. Third, conflict comprises beliefs by each side. Forth, it is a process that creates out of existing relationships

How Does Conflict Lead To Violence?

Conflict presents in various forms which occur in many situation and both willing or unwilling affect

Conflict Essay

Conflict is defined as the behaviour due to which people differ in their feelings, thought and/or actions. Collins (1995) states that the conflict is a ‘serious disagreement and argument about something important’ and also as ‘a serious difference between two or more beliefs, ideas or interests’ (cf. Kumaraswamy, 1997, p. 96). In general it is believed that conflicts are the underlying cause of disputes. In other words, dispute is a manifestation of the deep rooted conflict. A dispute is defined as ‘a class or kind of conflict, which manifests itself in distinct, justifiable issues. It involves disagreement over issues capable of resolution by negotiation, mediation or third party adjudication’

Avoiding Conflict at All Costs Essay

Conflict is defined as the perception of incompatible goals or actions between two people (McCornack, 2013). How you approach these tense situations greatly affects the outcome of the conflict and your interpersonal relationships. Everyone experiences disagreement at some point in their lives and it is important to know what you bring to conflict situations in order to become a more competent communicator. Therefore, I completed the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Questionnaire and asked my sister and boyfriend to do the same regarding my conflict style (Introduction to Interpersonal Communication Course Workbook, 2013, p.29-31). I chose these two people to fill out the questionnaire because they both know me very well in two different types

How to Handle Conflict

For many of us, every day is a struggle to avoid conflict. Yet avoidance is practically impossible since the core characteristics, ideas and beliefs of each individual often conflict with our own. Differences of opinion, competitive zeal, and misinterpretations, among other factors, can all generate ill feelings between co-workers within an organization. While we can’t avoid conflict, we can learn how to sidestep negative confrontations by becoming familiar with the types of conflicts that most commonly arise in the work place and by learning how to resolve them.

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• How Conflict Examples Can Teach Us to Listen

Listening deeply to our counterparts is a critical negotiation skill. Here, we look at how conflict examples can help us transform unproductive conflict into opportunities to listen and learn.

By Katie Shonk — on June 3rd, 2024 / Conflict Resolution

Listening is perhaps the clearest path to understanding others and resolving conflict, but it can be difficult to practice. The desire to disagree, prove we’re “right,” and engage in hardball tactics often get in the way. Here, we consider how transformative listening can be, then study how deep listening plays out in conflict examples.

Learning When Forced to Listen

In the 1980s, Jessie Daniels entered the sociology PhD program at the University of Texas with a lot of assumptions about the world, as she writes in a new anthology of personal essays by sociologists, Between Us: Healing Ourselves and Changing the World Through Sociology . Some of those assumptions were profoundly shaken when she secured a research position with Dr. Joe Feagin.

Feagin assigned Daniels the task of transcribing interviews with middle-class Black Americans about their experience with racism. At the time, Daniels, who is white, naively assumed that because the Civil Rights Act had made racial discrimination illegal in the United States, the interviewees might be “overly sensitive, looking for discrimination where there was none,” she recalls.

In fact, she soon found, the interviewees were slow to complain. When they did share stories of possible discrimination, they agonized over how to interpret them. One woman, for instance, described being seated at the back of a restaurant, near the kitchen. “Oh, come on,” Daniels thought. “ That could happen to anyone .” But as Daniels noted, the woman on the tape “couldn’t hear me, and I couldn’t actually interrupt her, so I just kept typing.”

In her interview, the woman expressed how confusing the incident was: “It could be discrimination, or it could not be, but now I’ve got to spend my energy to try and figure this out, because you know, I don’t want to be one of those complaining types.” She concluded, “It’s an exhausting way to go through life.” From nearly every interviewee, Daniels heard similar stories of “internal calculation in response to discrimination.”

By listening closely to the interviewees—with no opportunity to question or rebut them—Daniels gained a deeper understanding of systemic racism and the pain and confusion it causes. “By the end of transcribing those interviews, something fundamental in me had shifted,” she writes. “Instead of arguing or disagreeing with the Black people I’d spent time listening to, I was in solidarity with them.”

Daniels’ story illustrates how listening deeply to other people can challenge our preconceived beliefs. Listening can be especially beneficial in bringing disputing parties together, as the following conflict examples suggest.

Transforming Your Listening Skills

In her book Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures , Sarah Federman explores real-world conflict examples to illustrate how negotiation can help those in financial precarity achieve greater stability. While teaching negotiation at the University of Baltimore, she learned to adapt traditional negotiation training to the lives of her students, who were coping with problems such as negotiating car insurance claims and adapting to life after incarceration.

Teaching active listening skills in negotiation was core to this training. In particular, Federman encourages her students to “ ask five information-seeking questions with no agenda ” of others in their lives. “This means they can only ask questions to better understand the person’s world, not to lead the person toward or away from a particular solution,” she writes.

One student asked the following five questions of his brother, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and recently discharged from the hospital:

• How do you feel?
• How do you like the new medication?
• How do we make sure you stay on the medication and go for quarterly checkups?
• Would you talk to me whenever you feel like the drugs are not working?
• Do you need anything?

By asking these questions and listening carefully, the student gained a new understanding of how much his brother had suffered and of his past behavior. As Federman writes, “Good listening can reduce household and workplace tension, preventing conflict and making negotiations easier when they occur.”

Listening Is Contagious

Turning to conflict examples in a galaxy far, far away, mediator and coach Danielle Blumenberg describes the power of listening in negotiation in an essay for the new anthology Star Wars and Conflict Resolution II: My Negotiations Will Not Fail , which gleans conflict-resolution strategies from the Star Wars universe. In the film The Force Awakens, Blumenberg describes encounters between the self-reliant scavenger Rey, hero Luke Skywalker, and dark side warrior Kylo Ren.

In one scene, Rey tries telling Luke about the “darkness she feels calling to her,” Blumenberg writes, but “Luke doesn’t listen well—instead, he reacts with fear and shuts her down.” In a later encounter with Kylo, Rey “mirrors Luke’s approach, casting accusations at Kylo and not seeking information.” Clearly, poor listening can become a vicious cycle.

But rather than shutting her down, as Luke did, Kylo “responds with curiosity”; he ignores her insults and begins asking questions. The next time they connect, Rey reciprocates by asking Kylo questions and seeking to understand his behavior. “Their mutual listening begins to move them past their conflict,” writes Blumenberg. The key to this breakthrough was Kylo’s ability to move beyond accusation and respond by listening closely—a negotiation strategy we can all adopt.

What have you learned from recent conflict examples in your life?

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Conflict — The Tell-Tale Heart: Conflict and Psychological Turmoil

The Tell-tale Heart: Conflict and Psychological Turmoil

• Categories: Conflict The Tell Tale Heart

About this sample

Words: 738 |

Published: Jun 6, 2024

Words: 738 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Internal conflict: the narrator's descent into madness, external conflict: the narrator versus the old man, the interplay of internal and external conflicts.

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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The Fight Over the Next Pandemic

The deadline for a new international pandemic plan was last week. so far, negotiations have failed..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, at the height of the COVID pandemic, nearly 200 countries started negotiating a plan to ensure they did better when the next pandemic inevitably arrives. Their deadline for that plan was last week.

My colleague Apoorva Mandavilli explains why so far, those negotiations have failed.

It’s Thursday, June 6.

So, Apoorva, something that was supposed to happen and happen right now that I think most of us didn’t even was ever in the works hasn’t happened. And that’s a global plan for the next pandemic. So tell us this entire story.

Think back to 2021, the very worst days of COVID when we had thousands of people dying in the US and in the rest of the world. There was just so much confusion about whether to wear masks or not, whether to close schools. And it was very difficult to think what any country should do.

And so in the middle of that chaos and confusion —

The Eagle has landed.

Carrying the hopes of a country, the first shipment of coronavirus vaccines reach Australian skies.

— we did get the vaccines.

You’re watching right now history being made, one of the first people in the entire country right here to get dose number two of the Pfizer vaccine.

Then all of a sudden, there was this hope. But the thing is that those vaccines were really mostly available in the richer countries.

Parts of Asia and Latin America have recorded a spike in COVID fatalities amid medical supply and vaccine shortages.

Few people in Africa have been vaccinated. Some countries don’t have any vaccines at all.

So we in the United States and a lot of countries in the European Union and some of the other high and middle income countries had the vaccines.

Rich countries have enough doses to vaccinate everyone nearly three times over, whilst poor countries don’t have enough to even reach health workers and people at risk.

But elsewhere in the world, there were no vaccines really. It became obvious to some low and middle income countries that they were not going to do very well in this pandemic. There were all these advanced purchase orders from the richer countries. And they were having some very tough negotiations with pharma companies that were charging them more than they were charging the rich countries.

And by the end of that horrible, horrible year, more than 90 percent of people in the richer countries had had two doses of vaccine. But 2 percent of people in low income countries had had any vaccines. So that really just striking inequity made people realize this was just a mess. We did not know how to deal with the pandemic.

The time to act is now.

So in December 2021, by the end of this year of inequity —

We must not allow the memories of this crisis to fade and go back to business as usual.

— the World Health Organization brought together all the countries —

The impacts on our societies, economies, and health, especially for the poor and the most vulnerable, are too significant.

— and launched this process to come up with a playbook to really think about how all the countries of the world need to prevent and respond to the next pandemic and do it in a way that would protect everybody, rich and poor, across the world. And the WHO decided that this discussion could not be just an informal conversation between health ministers, that this needed to be an international treaty, a legally binding treaty so that every country has to take this very seriously and everybody agrees on how to do this next time.

Hmm. So at the very height of COVID’s awfulness, these countries in the WHO are saying, we know you all are very, very busy fighting this pandemic. It is taking up all your time and energy. But we need you to now start to think about how badly this is going and not just fight the current pandemic but start planning on a better way to fight the next one. That’s kind of a big ask.

It is a big ask, but what is the alternative? That we come to the next pandemic and have a repeat of all of the chaos and confusion we saw during COVID? So I think it was an acknowledgment that we needed it. We needed to come up with a plan. And it became obvious that part of that plan needed to be a way to repair the mistrust that had formed between low income countries and high income countries and that without repairing that, we just did not really stand a good chance of fighting the next pandemic.

Right. And, of course, the thing about a global pandemic is that any weak link, any country that’s not doing its part or getting what it needs, becomes a problem for every other country. That’s the nature of a pandemic. We need — we talked about this with you, we talked about this with our colleagues throughout the pandemic — a system where there’s a strong program and plan in every country so that the virus can be stamped out.

Exactly. I mean, in the United States, more people died because of variants than they did because of the original virus. And a lot of those variants started in countries that did not have access to vaccines.

OK, so what do these talks start to actually look like? And just how many countries end up being involved in them?

So all of the countries that are member states of the World Health Organization were involved in this. 194 countries.

And they all sent delegates to meet to draft something and then to discuss every aspect of it and try to come to a consensus. And the goal was to get that to a point where all the countries were ready to sign off on it by May 2024. They had meetings over a period of two and a half years to talk through this. Some sections they all agreed on pretty easily. You can imagine the general goals like, yes, we should have a good plan to fight a pandemic. Or yes, we should have good research on vaccines and drugs, things like that, the general sort of philosophical goals everybody agrees on.

Right. Principles are always the easiest thing to negotiate.

The easiest thing to negotiate. But then you start getting into how this happens, right? And it’s actually kind of interesting. In the draft, if you look at the drafts, they have areas that are green, which means everybody sort of agreed, and yellow, which means they’re starting to come to an agreement, their sort of general consensus, and then white, which means it’s really no agreement. They’re just not even on the same page. And when you look at what’s green across all of these drafts, the philosophical goal is green from the start, no problem.

The yellow started to come slowly, these areas of consensus, things like, for example, safety measures in the labs that work with dangerous viruses. And that’s not just because one of the theories about COVID is that the virus leaked from a lab. We know from long before COVID that lab safety is very important for making sure that those dangerous viruses don’t get out into the world. There is also agreement around how countries should do surveillance to see what outbreaks might be emerging. And some of that stuff is tricky.

Why is it tricky? I mean, isn’t there a pretty standard playbook for trying to detect a virus and what to do once you detect it?

Sure. But there are some things that are big sticking points like money. Not all countries have the resources to do the kind of surveillance that they need to do. And so who funds that? And then some countries have vested interests, like Argentina wouldn’t want any rules that forbid export of certain kinds of meat products because that’s a big part of their economy.

There are countries where live animal markets are a thing, and not just in China, which we’re all familiar with, is another origin theory for COVID. Lots of other countries rely on these markets. And they don’t want to have very strict rules about which animals can be held together and how densely packed they can or can’t be. So when you start to get into the details there, it is actually difficult to reach consensus on some of these things.

But they have made a lot of progress. And they have come to yellow and green on some important things like that every country should have a health care workforce trained to respond to a pandemic, that they should make best efforts to have local production of things like vaccines and drugs, and that they should provide all of these resources to their own citizens. Things like that, those are all under agreement. They’re all green now.

So what exactly is holding these negotiations back? What ends up being the biggest remaining conflict?

It won’t surprise you to hear, Michael, that the biggest conflict is exactly what all of this began with, which is the lack of access that low income countries have to things like vaccines.

There have been interesting proposals in the drafts and one in particular that would solve at least some of this issue. But it’s been very difficult to convince rich countries, middle income countries, and low income countries that that proposal would be of great benefit to everybody involved.

We’ll be right back. So, Apoorva, tell us about this particular proposal that could do a lot of work to solve the inequities at the center of these negotiations and why that proposal has created so much conflict.

The heart of the section that has really created the most conflict is whether low income countries get access to vaccines in a timely manner and at a cost that is affordable to them. And all the low income countries recognize that they don’t have a lot of bargaining power. They were treated pretty poorly by pharma companies during this past pandemic. And so they’ve been thinking about setting things up so that that does not happen again, that the next time around, they are not left behind.

Right. But like you said, they don’t have a lot of power to bargain.

They don’t. But there have been times when poor countries have come up with a way to make everybody else realize that they’re essential to this whole process. So let me give you an example of this that really, I think, illustrates how much everybody else needs the low income nations during an outbreak.

So in 2006, Indonesia was battling a bird flu outbreak. And they had been very dutifully sending samples of the virus that they had in their country to the World Health Organization labs to analyze. And that information helps pharma companies develop things like vaccines.

Or tests, right.

Or tests. And in this particular case, the Indonesian Health Ministry approached the World Health Organization to say, look, we’ve given you these samples. We have people dying in our country. And we need access to vaccines and drugs. And the WHO told them, sorry, we don’t directly distribute any of that. You have to talk to the manufacturers.

And this is where that leverage becomes really important because Indonesia did not actually have leverage with these pharma companies. And so the vaccine manufacturer told them that they would sell them vaccines but at commercial prices that that country cannot afford. And then a drug manufacturer told them that they did not have enough drugs to give Indonesia because richer countries had placed enough purchase orders that there was a delay of two years. So [LAUGHS]: Indonesia was so angry about all of this that they declined to share any more samples with the WHO.

So Indonesia basically says, we will never again make the mistake of promptly sharing information about a potentially deadly pathogen because we learned that we get nothing in return.

Right. And understanding that realization also has driven a lot of the conversation in the drafting of this treaty where low income countries have essentially said, we recognize that you need us to share these samples. But we are not going to do that unless you can promise to us that we will get some access to vaccines and drugs that you make based on the samples we give you. So we want something in return for the information we provide to you.

What is the specific proposal that comes from this realization?

Yeah, this proposal has created a lot of controversy, so there are versions of it. But the most recent one says essentially that if the low income countries share their samples with the WHO that pharma companies have to give the WHO 10 percent of the vaccines they make as a donation and then 10 percent either at a non-profit cost or just a deeply discounted rate also to the WHO. And then the WHO would distribute that 20 percent of vaccines that they get from the pharma companies to the countries that are in most need.

Hmm. So this proposal, which feels very innovative, is the ultimate manifestation of poor countries’ power in this dynamic. If they don’t get vaccines, then the big countries will never get the information about a virus that’s necessary for there to have ever been a vaccine. It’s really interesting.

It is. And this is the biggest chip that low income countries have. So they are not willing to budge on this. But guess who doesn’t like this? Pharmaceutical companies and the countries that really support the interests of the pharmaceutical companies. And that includes the United States, Germany, Switzerland, some of the big players, places where these companies are a big presence and a very powerful lobby.

What specifically have these pharmaceutical companies and the countries like the US that have so many of them said about this proposal?

So the countries, they are willing to give in principle and say that the pharmaceutical companies will voluntarily give some of the vaccines to the WHO, but they don’t want it mandated. Whereas the low income countries, they want it to be really codified so that there is no loophole. And the conversations have gone round and round on that one word, “voluntary.”

Apoorva, is it safe to assume that a country like the US, which, of course, has a booming and very profitable pharmaceutical industry, won’t sign on to these proposals unless that word “voluntary” is in the deal, that they cannot abide by one where it’s mandatory that these big pharmaceutical companies have to give up so much of their vaccine to poorer countries?

They are not going to say that in so many words, but yes. And the United States actually has come up with some very nice plans to help some of these low income countries set up infrastructure and be prepared for pandemics. But I think crossing pharmaceutical companies is not a place they will go.

Hmm. So is that really the only big obstacle left in these negotiations? Or is there anything else?

Oh, there’s lots more.

There has been so much misinformation and disinformation around this whole issue just like there has been about every aspect of COVID. And a lot of it centers around the hesitation and the opposition that many populist leaders have expressed. In the US, for example, there are Republican senators and governors who have come out against the treaty. And they say that this is a power grab by the WHO, that it is going to allow the director general of the WHO to tell the US what to do, whether to have mask mandates, whether to have vaccine mandates, none of which is true, by the way.

And in a bid to counter some of that misinformation, there is actually an explicit line in the treaty saying that the treaty respects the sovereignty of all the individual nations. They’ve tried to address that head on. But it hasn’t really made all of that chatter go away.

Mm-hmm. How much does this practically matter, the fact that a handful or perhaps more than a handful of Republicans in the US are skeptical of this and think ideologically speaking that it oversteps the bounds of what a treaty should do? I mean, ultimately, do they have any power over whether the US signs this treaty?

They do because delegates can agree to this treaty at the WHO, but everybody has to bring it back to their home countries. And in the US, the treaty then has to be approved for ratification by the Senate. You have to have a two thirds majority in the Senate say, yes, we agree to this treaty. So if you have a number of Republican senators who are absolutely opposed to it, it may not pass.

Mm. So it very much feels like so many of the issues that made everyone think this treaty was necessary, inequities between rich countries and poor countries and misinformation and ideological skepticism of how to handle a pandemic to begin with that really defined COVID for us, that those forces are now making it very hard for this treaty to actually be reached. They never really went away.

They never went away. It felt like there was about five seconds when everyone was united in thinking that we needed something different, and there was a lot of goodwill. But a lot of that has evaporated. And we’re getting very quickly to a point where people have forgotten what COVID looked like and felt like and what the devastation was like and have gone back to old positions on we don’t want to share. We don’t want to give anything away. Everything for us first. All of the thinking that led to the problems during COVID.

So what realistically happens now? And do you based on your reporting think that this treaty has any real chance of being completed and passed by the 194 countries involved in it?

Well, the draft was supposed to be finalized at the meeting last week of the World Health Assembly. And that didn’t happen. But they did set a deadline to say that the negotiations will continue. And then they’ll hope to have something done by next year’s meeting.

But there’s just so much in flux right now. There are elections all over the world. Who knows what Donald Trump will do if he gets elected? We know that he withdrew from the WHO the last time around. And he has even said that he may shut down the pandemic preparedness office in the White House. So he’s not particularly invested in this whole topic, this whole issue.

And in the meantime, we already have so many threats that are really picking up. For global health experts and for reporters like myself who watch all this stuff, it’s a bit alarming that we now have bird flu right here in the United States. And the next pandemic, pretty much every expert I talk to agrees it’s not a question of if, but when. And if we had had this treaty ready, if we can ever have this treaty ready, we would be so much better prepared for something like that to happen. But it just doesn’t seem all that likely right now.

Well, Apoorva, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. In a last minute about face, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she would block a long awaited tolling plan known as congestion pricing that was set to begin at the end of the month. The program, the first of its kind in the US, would have charged as much as $15 for cars entering the busiest parts of Manhattan. The goal was to alleviate traffic, reduce pollution, and raise money for the city’s aging subway system. But Hochul argued that the tolls threatened the city’s fragile economic recovery after the pandemic.

And on Thursday, former romantic partners of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, testified in a Delaware courtroom about the depths of his drug addiction and the toll that it took on them. The testimony, including how much Hunter Biden spent on drugs and the type of drugs he used, was designed to establish that he was a chronic drug abuser who lied when he claimed to be sober on an application for a handgun in 2018.

Today’s episode was produced by Alex Stern, Carlos Prieto, and Stella Tan with help from Will Reid and Rikki Novetsky. It was edited by Lexie Diao and Devon Taylor, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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At the height of the Covid pandemic, nearly 200 countries started negotiating a plan to ensure they would do better when the next pandemic inevitably arrived. Their deadline for that plan was last week.

Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter for The Times, explains why, so far, the negotiations have failed.

On today’s episode

Apoorva Mandavilli , a science and global health reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading

Countries failed to agree on a treaty to prepare the world for the next pandemic before a major international meeting.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

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Donald Trump found guilty: Will he go to prison? What to know ahead of sentencing

Donald Trump is the first former president convicted of a crime and now he could be the first one sent to jail or prison.

Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, opening up the possibility that he could be incarcerated .

Not only is Trump the first former president be convicted of a crime, he is also the presumptive Republican nominee lined up for a likely rematch with President Joe Biden in November.

Even though jail time is on the table for his conviction, he is expected to appeal the jury's decision. Legal experts told USA TODAY any jail or prison sentence likely won't take effect until after his appeal plays out, pushing it past the November election.

Here is what to know about a possible incarceration sentence:

Live updates: Former President Donald Trump found guilty on all counts in NY criminal hush money case

Can Trump go to prison?

Yes. Each felony count of falsifying business records − elevated to a felony because prosecutors proved the purpose was to commit or conceal another crime − carries a maximum sentence of four years. However, New York caps such sentencing the type of felonies Trump faced – Class E felonies –  at 20 years .

Some New York litigators and legal experts told USA TODAY that Trump is likely to face only probation.

"With a defendant who has no prior criminal record, my absolute expectation would be a sentence of probation," Mitchell Epner, a New York litigator with decades of experience, said ahead of the trial.

Others said jail or prison time is very much on the table, but likely under four years and potentially limited to months.

Norman Eisen, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment, co-authored a report looking at sentencing for other defendants with no criminal history who were convicted of falsifying business records in New York.

Eisen noted one construction executive was sentenced in 2015 to spend two days per week in jail for a year for falsifying records to hide payments in a bribery scheme. In 2013, two corporate executives were sentenced to between four and six months of jail time for falsifying records to misclassify their salaries as expenses under their employer's larger bribery and fraud scheme.

"This is a case that does not involve any physical violence, and it doesn't – there's not sort of a 'named victim,' so to speak – and so the court is going to take that into consideration," Anna Cominsky, who directs the Criminal Defense Clinic at New York Law School, told USA TODAY.

Cominsky added, however, that it will "be very dependent on – and also very interesting to see – what the prosecutor asks for."

At a press conference following the verdict, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to preview what he will recommend to the judge.

Experts weigh in: If Trump is found guilty, will Americans still be able to vote for him?

When will Trump be sentenced?

Judge Juan Merchan will issue Trump's sentence in a July 11 hearing. Merchan instructed Trump's defense team to file any post-conviction motions by June 13, and told the prosecution to respond by June 27. Those filings could include arguments from both sides about Trump's sentence.

Defendants are sometimes "remanded" pending sentencing, or kept in custody while they wait for their sentence.

But legal experts told USA TODAY that is unlikely in this case.

Can Trump bring the Secret Service to jail?

Even before the conviction, logistical questions about Trump going to jail came up when he repeatedly violated a gag order restricting his public comments on witnesses and jurors.

Among those questions is how the Secret Service will continue to work with Trump. He receives around-the-clock protection as a former president, which no judge has previously had to consider in a sentencing.

"If I were the judge − and I don't know what a judge would do in this case − I would reject out of hand the concept that because he was once president, and because as a matter of policy the Secret Service guards former presidents, that therefore he can't go to jail," said John Moscow, a New York lawyer who spent 30 years in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

Moscow told USA TODAY ahead of the trial that the judge could get creative – for example, order the former president to stay in a hotel wing or military base.

Merchan previously threatened to jail Trump if he continued to violate a gag order in the case, even as the judge acknowledged concerns about Trump's Secret Service protection.

"There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort," Merchan said on May 6 of the trial . While he said he didn't want to jail Trump over the gag order, he would "if necessary and appropriate."