Writing a good conclusion is an essential part of any text. It's the last idea that the reader is left with once they're finished reading, so you want to leave a good impression.
The conclusion briefly restates the main points of the writing and makes sense of any results that were obtained.
To write a good conclusion, you can keep these points in mind:
Summarise the points made in the body of the text. Try to write these in a different way from how they were written in the body.
Provide insight. Tell your audience what conclusion you have come to based on the information you've provided.
Provide a solution or ask open-ended questions. Give your reader something to think about after they've finished. Is there a solution to the issues raised? Is there further thought and action that could be taken? Are there broader implications?
In general, a good conclusion makes the reader think. It causes them to reflect on what they've just read and consider how this affects them or the topic they've read about.
It's important to remember that the type of conclusion needed will depend on what you're writing. A text discussing the results of a science experiment will have a different conclusion to a piece of persuasive writing.
A conclusion to a persuasive text will have more bias, since the writer is trying to steer the reader to agree with their opinion and their own conclusions.
In logic, a conclusion is a judgment or decision you come to - the final idea after considering the information provided.
Jumping to a conclusion
To jump to a conclusion is a phrase used when a judgment is made about something before all the information is presented. This is often because of a preconceived bias that is held.
If somebody jumps to a conclusion about a certain person, this could mean that they were too critical of them, or decided that something must be true or false about them before truly knowing them