4d. Analyzing to demonstrate your critical reading

4dAnalyze to demonstrate your critical reading.

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR HANDBOOK

Writing about a text often requires you to quote directly from the text.

image Guidelines for using quotation marks: 51c

Whereas a summary most often answers the question of what a text says, an analysis looks at how a text conveys its main idea. As you read and reread a text—previewing, annotating, and conversing—you are forming a judgment of it. When you analyze that text, you say to readers: “Here’s my reading of this text. This is what the text means and why it matters.” Assignments calling for an analysis of a text vary widely, but they usually ask you to look at how the text’s parts contribute to its central argument or purpose, often with the aim of judging its evidence or overall effect.

Balancing summary with analysis

If you have written a summary of a text, you may find it useful to refer to the main points of the summary as you write your analysis. Your readers may or may not be familiar with the text you are analyzing, so you need to summarize the text briefly to help readers understand the basis of your analysis. The following strategies will help you balance summary with analysis.

Here is an example of how student writer Emilia Sanchez balances summary with analysis in her essay about Betsy Taylor’s article. Before stating her thesis, Sanchez summarizes the article’s purpose and central idea.

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Drafting an analytical thesis statement

An effective thesis statement for analytical writing responds to a question about a text or tries to resolve a problem in the text. Remember that your thesis shouldn’t state what the reading is about. Your thesis presents your judgment of the text’s argument.

If Emilia Sanchez had started her analysis of “Big Box Stores Are Bad for Main Street” with the following thesis statement, she merely would have repeated the main idea of the article.

ineffective thesis statement: Big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot promote consumerism by offering endless goods at low prices, but they do nothing to promote community.

Sanchez wrote the following thesis statement, which offers her judgment of Taylor’s argument.

effective thesis statement: By ignoring the complex economic relationship between large chain stores and their communities, Taylor incorrectly assumes that simply getting rid of big-box stores would have a positive effect on America’s communities.

As you draft your thesis, try asking what, why, and how questions to form a judgment about a text you are reading.

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  • Academic reading and writing > As you write: Drafting and revising an analytical thesis

Guidelines for analyzing a text

Instructors who ask you to analyze an essay or an article often expect you to address some of the following questions:

  • What questions (stated or unstated) does the author address? Or what problem does the author attempt to solve?
  • What is the author’s thesis, or central idea?
  • How does the author structure the text? What are the key parts, and how do they relate to one another and to the thesis?
  • Who is the intended audience? What strategies has the author used to generate interest in the argument and to persuade readers of its merit?
  • What evidence does the author use to support the thesis? How persuasive is the evidence? (See 6b.)
  • Does the author anticipate objections and counter opposing views? (See 6c.)
  • Does the author use any faulty reasoning? (See 6a.)