INTEGRATING PROCESS ANALYSIS INTO AN ESSAY

You may find it helpful to incorporate a process analysis into a discussion that relies on a different pattern of development. For instance, in a descriptive essay about an alcohol abuse program for high school students, you might decide to include a brief process analysis of how alcohol impairs mental functioning. Lamott incorporates illustration and description to make her process analysis engaging. Here are a few suggestions for incorporating process analysis effectively into essays based on other patterns of development. (The essay “The Psychology of Stuff and Things” later in this chapter uses multiple patterns of development to explain how our stuff defines us across the life span.)

  1. Explain only the major steps in the process rather than every step in detail to avoid diverting your readers from the primary focus of your essay.
  2. Introduce the process analysis with a transitional sentence that alerts readers that a process analysis will follow. For example, here is how you might introduce a brief summary of the process by which AIDS spreads through HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

    Before you explain to teenagers how to avoid contracting HIV, you need to let them know what they are avoiding. Teenagers need to know that HIV is transmitted by . . .

  3. It is sometimes helpful to use the word process or procedure to let readers know that a process analysis is to follow. In the preceding example, the final sentence might be revised to read as follows:

    Teenagers need to know that HIV is transmitted by the following process.

  4. Once you have completed the process analysis, alert readers that you are about to return to the main topic. You might conclude the process with a summary statement.

    Above all, teenagers need to know that HIV is transmitted through an exchange of bodily fluids.