So, I had been peer reviewing 5 essays so far and 4/5 of the essays has that written in the introduction...

Okay, I might be a little bias towards this but... I had always been taught by my teachers (english and history alike) to never ever use "This essay will discuss..." or anything similar to that in the introduction. Instead, to use something that flows well and entices the reader to read more.

Personally, I think this is true and also... it kind of makes the essay look a bit cheap to me if that is to be used...

What are your thoughts to this?

I also agree that it shouldn't be used. You should be able to express what your essay will be on without having to resort to flat out telling the reader "this is what my essay will be on"

I definitely agree with you. To me, it's the tacky, easy-peasy method. An introduction should orient the reader and flesh out the thesis/main points. Plus, using the sentence kills off any connection the reader will make with the writer's point. Essays should be crafted as pieces of artwork, that's what my professor says ;)

I agree with you 100%

I can't believe people would seriously write that . . . I am dumbfounded. My english teacher would have murdered anyone who turned a paper into her with that written on it. It should be obvious to the reader what your paper is discussing without having to blatantly state it. The introduction is the author's chance to be creative and draw the reader in, not bore them to death by stating the obvious.

100%. I'll usually stop reading right there, unless I have to continue reading for some reason. Unless you're still in elementary school, it's completely unacceptable.

Similarly, "in conclusion" at the end is just as redundant/unnecessary. My English teacher insists she'll fail any paper that she sees that on as it's a sign of immature writing. I have to agree.

-of-Randomness i just found out it given out as an essay template in our resources. le gasp no wonder why one of our teachers said that he disagreed with the "how to write an essay" resources that were given to us xD

and i agree... i just want to hunt those students down and scream at them!

Whoah?! That's terrible. My teacher does the same thing a lot of times too though; she'll give us soem template/rubric that the school wants her to pass out and then follow it with "But don't listen to most of what's said there. I don't like it because it's wrong/bad/not specific enough/etc."

-of-Randomness that is just ridiculous though... why should a teacher be forced to do that even though they (and clearly the majority) know that, that is not the way to go and write a good essay...

Oh my god, yes. It looks like such lazy writing when I see that, and I can only imagine the fit my past and current English teachers would throw if they saw that past the fourth grade. -shakes head- I mean seriously; "show, don't tell" doesn't just apply to novel writing. We don't need a summary, just write it out.

I think it depends on the essay, as well as the teacher/professor. I had some that actually wanted us to have some sort of thesis sentence that actually said "This essay will..." or "In this essay" or anything along those lines. Otherwise they'd say something like "I have no idea what your essay is about with your current thesis sentence"

Yes but it's still clear if you write something like "The great depression can easily be broken down and taught in three different sections, topic 1, 2, and 3" versus writing "This essay will discuss how the great depression ban be broken down into three different sections." The topic is still clear without the overkill and tactlessness of blatantly stating so.

I agree. But I still had some who'd want us to use that horrid sentence. The majority of them were history or science professors.

eep that kills me. I guess it's better if they're not english teachers but they should still require proper papers. I don't know if I could do that even if it wasn't for an english class :)

One of the reasons I'm glad I was an English Major. I only did a few history classes to fill up spaces

Hah, it's one of those things that the school does to show they're "constantly improving." Pretty much just so they can show the big wigs they're doing stuff. I find it pointless as well.

I do agree that "This essay will do x and y" should never be present in a final draft, but I see it as acceptable in some instances, e.g. topic proposals and/or abstracts. ... Although you're most likely not dealing with either of those, so eh. :P

haha, yeah xD it's more with the introduction of the essay... but i get what you mean by being okay in abstracts and topic proposals =]

it depends on what sort of paper's being written. When I submit for publication in legal journals, the peer reviewers and editors all expect to see a thesis outline in the introduction, and the fairly standard method in legal journals to do this does involve writing something very much like "This paper will explore the effects of X piece of legislation on Y type of businesses" (terrible example, I know). It makes it much easier for journal indexers to abstract the paper if there's an upfront and clearly defined thesis in the intro. It also saves slightly lazy researchers like me from reading the whole paper to see if it's any use to me ...!

I do agree with you though that there are circumstances in which it may not be appropriate. I wrote as a columnist for the university paper as an undergrad and I quite obviously would never have written "This column will review X, Y and Z new albums".

I'm so glad wrote that because I was about to say the same thing lol. It really depends on the subject area. I think that, as a general rule, "This paper will discuss" shouldn't be used when trying to achieve some kind of stylistic goal. So usually, it's not appropriate for English papers. However, it's often okay to use that phrase for research or reports because the primary purpose of the introduction is to give the reader clear, concise information about the content of the document, rather than attempting to persuade the reader to continue reading. :)

EDIT: Kind of irrelevant, but I think that all good writing comes from well-thought-out ideas, rather than flowery language. I have a little theory that simple language is often more than adequate to express an idea, if the idea is well thought out. On the other hand, flowery language is often used to conceal poorly formed ideas :P (I'm not saying this rule applies to everything, but it's worked pretty well for me for my high school English papers. lol).