Process Analysis: Explaining How Something Works or Is Done

15

Process Analysis

Explaining How Something Works or Is Done

IN THIS CHAPTER YOU WILL LEARN TO

  • understand the purpose and function of process analysis essays,
  • use graphic organizers to visualize process analysis essays,
  • integrate process analysis into an essay,
  • read and think critically about process analysis, and
  • plan, organize, draft, revise, and edit essays using process analysis.

WRITING QUICK START

T

he screen shot on this page shows people using Skype, a free Web service that provides audio-video communication, allowing users to see and hear each other. Write a brief paragraph describing how to get, set up, and use Skype or another Internet service or device (such as a smartphone). Your audience is people who wish to use the service or device for the first time.

image
©Alex Segre/Alamy

To describe the steps involved in downloading and using Skype, you had to explain a process. A process analysis explains step by step how something works, is done, or is made. Process analyses provide people with practical information — directions for assembling equipment, instructions for registering for classes, an explanation of how a medication works. Whatever the purpose, the information in a process analysis must be accurate, clear, and easy to follow. In this chapter, you will read process analyses; you will also write a process analysis essay or use process analysis in essays that rely on one or more of the other patterns of development.

USING PROCESS ANALYSIS IN COLLEGE AND THE WORKPLACE

  • For a child development course, your assignment is to visit a day care center, observe one confrontation between a child and a teacher, and explain how the teacher resolved the conflict.
  • As part of a chemistry lab report, you need to summarize the procedure you followed in preparing a solution or conducting an experiment.
  • While working as an engineer at a water treatment plant, you are asked to describe how the city’s drinking water is tested and treated for contamination.