How should I write an essay introduction, and is a conclusion just the same thing?

For IB English Literature, and indeed for all essay-based subjects at this level, an introduction is vital, as it sets out your aims and interests to the examiner while also providing insight into your methodology. This will be especially important if your essay becomes bogged down in detail-focused analysis in the middle, as often happens as student learn to take on longer pieces of writing (and almost always in an English EE first draft!), as your examiner will look to your introduction to provide a wider view on your close reading paragraphs. An introduction should therefore outline the question you want to tackle, the framework through which you will do this (this can be referred to briefly, as your introduction need not spend time grappling with the difficulties of applying a feminist lens to a fifteenth-century text, for instance, and the areas of the topic you will need to consider before you can reach a conclusion. Your conclusion serves as reminder of all the hard work you have completed in your essay, and will mimic to a certain degree your introduction- with the vital difference that you can refer to things that went wrong, or your 'answer' to the question, as you have done the work by the time the examiner is reading the conclusion. To conclude, then, you introduction brings the examiner into your world, and shows the path ahead, and the conclusion is you and your examiner looking back over your journey, contemplating what could have gone differently, and what you have learnt together from the essay.