English 102 Key Concepts
Habits of Mind
Curiosity, Openness, Engagement, Creativity, Persistence, Responsibility, Flexibility, Metacognition
Qualities of Effective Analytical Writing
A focus on a complex subject. Any subject worth analyzing—a political position, a book, a war strategy—will consist of many parts or features, and these parts will interact with one another in complicated ways. Research-based rather than personal-based writing. A formal analysis usually requires research. Your understanding of the subject is seldom enough to inform a thorough analysis. If you were analyzing the bond proposal, for example, you would need to read the entire proposal, interview the officials or citizen groups behind it, and examine recent school budgets. A focused, straightforward presentation: An effective analysis focuses on the subject's component parts, always working to show how they combine to make up the whole. All aspects of your text must focus on some central theme or idea that links all parts or aspects of the analysis. A conclusion that ties parts together. In an analysis, your conclusion does much more than just state your major claim (as a thesis statement usually does). In your conclusion, you have the opportunity to outline how the parts function together and also to explain whether you believe they function effectively or not.
Writing Process of Analysis
After considering invention questions, organize free write content. Place your ideas in a sequence—whether from smallest to largest or least to most important. A list helps you categorize each aspect of your subject for an analysis. Once you have put your information in a list, you can move each item around as you see fit. Finally, ask others what they know about your subject—what they see as its component parts, what they think are its important aspects, and how they think those parts or aspects work together. A useful way to conduct such interviews is to ask the who, what, where, when, why, and how questions that a newspaper reporter generally relies on.
Parts of a Complete Draft: Title
As you compose your analysis, a title may emerge, but often it will not occur to you until late in the process. Because an analysis is by definition complex, you may not be able to summarize your main ideas in your title, but it should be something that catches your readers' attention.
First Draft
As you write your first draft, remember the main point that you are trying to make. In an analysis, you will want to make sure that your discussion of the aspects of your subject helps to support what it is that you are trying to say about the whole. Many writers, once they decide on their organization, write individual pieces of their draft and then put them all together.
Exploring ideas with Research
Before you begin your research, consider what your focal point should be. For example, suppose you wanted to research how electronic telecommunications such as smartphones and the Internet are helping college students communicate electronically with their professors and classmates, enabling them to keep in touch and to share more information. You could choose to focus on how college students who take online courses communicate with classmates. Look over your invention work to remind yourself of all that you know about your subject, as well as the questions you came up with about it. Use the reporter's questions of who, what, Page 217where, when, why, and how to get started on your research. After you have decided what information you need, determine what kind of research you need to conduct in order to gather that information. Use an electronic journal to record images, URLs, interview notes, and other electronic pieces of information that you find as you conduct your research.
Organizing Structures: Relating Causes and Effects
Begin with information about your subject that may surprise your readers. Explain how an analysis of your subject will lead to more surprises and better understanding. Use the writing strategy of cause and effect to show how each aspect or part of your subject causes or is affected by the other aspects or parts. Provide specific examples to show what you mean. Conclude by outlining how parts of your subject function together.
Research Process
Being purposeful with research. Finding credible, reliable sources that are most relevant or applicable to your topic. Messy research process is okay. Process Cycle: Questioning, Planning, Gathering, Sifting, Synthesizing, Evaluating.
Rhetorical Considerations in Analytical Writing
By researching and analyzing the problem, issue, concept, options, or object, you will provide your readers with an analysis that will allow them to make more informed decisions.
Parts of a Complete Draft: Body
Classify and label each aspect of your subject. In her analysis of the parking situation on her campus, student Sarah Washington classifies those who are likely to use parking spots as "students," "full-time faculty," and "staff." Define the various parts of your subject—explaining what each is and how it relates to the other parts. If you were to analyze a smartphone, for example, you would probably focus on the input options (keypad or touch screen), texting and phone capability, audio, video, and Web-browsing capability. Compare and contrast each aspect of your subject, so readers can see the differences and similarities. For instance, you might compare the functional features of two smartphones. Focus on the cause-and-effect relationship of each aspect of your subject, to show how one aspect causes, or is caused by, one or more other aspects. This approach would work well if you were analyzing a complex machine such as a car or an airplane.
Research
Conducting research and investigating an issue. Be informed about your topic and speak from a place of knowledge and authority. Educate yourself of multiple perspectives surrounding your topic and form opinion. Identify gaps in research to contribute to the conversation with unique ideas. Address a writing task and reach your audience effectively.
Invention
Everything you do to generate new ideas and material for a composing situation. From thinking to writing.
Organizing Structures: Defining Parts
Explain why the subject you are analyzing is important to your readers. Provide examples of how readers might be affected by the subject. Provide background information so readers can see the whole subject of your analysis. Use a strategy of description to explain each aspect or part of your subject. Provide examples to show what you mean. Conclude by showing how each aspect or part works with the others.
Secondary Research
Research conducted by someone else, a scholar. Empirical or historical studies in scholarly and popular books, in journals, and on websites are examples of secondary research. Provide a more general or bird's eye view of issue. Documents from popular news articles, magazines, government sites, and corporate documents. Supporting more local or specific claims about an issue. Helpful for discussing your topic in a general way.
Benefits of the Research Process
Focus your inquiry and analyze various aspects of your topic in more depth. Strengthen your ethos/credibility as a writer. Master as many of the skills in the WPA outcomes and practice habits of mind.
Parts of a Complete Draft: Conclusion
In your conclusion, review the major parts or aspects of your subject, explaining the following: How they relate to one another How they function together How all of the aspects of your subject lead to the conclusion you have reached
Rhetorical Knowledge Learning Objectives
Key rhetorical concepts and use when analyzing and composing. Experience reading and composing in several genres. Impact on understanding of how genere conventions shape and are shaped by readers and writers choices, practices, and purposes. Response to a variety of rhetorical situations and contexts. Shift sin voice tone, level of formality, design, medium. and or structure in different contexts. Use of a variety of tech to address a range of a audiences and informed decisions to use these different technologies. Matching different environments (eg. print and electronic) to varying rhetorical situations.
Writing a Visual Analysis
On any given day, you are likely to encounter hundreds or even thousands of texts with visuals such as photos, diagrams, charts, maps, and graphs. For example, advertisements with visual elements appear in magazines, in newspapers, on billboards, as part of Web sites, and in various other media. The visuals that you see each day are as rhetorical as the words that you read. Because these kinds of visual elements are pervasive and often persuasive, readers and viewers need skills for analyzing them. A visual analysis will usually include the following features: A copy of the image. Seeing the image helps the reader understand the analysis, and reading the analysis helps the reader gain new insights into the visual. A written description of the image. The description can help guide readers' attention to specific features. Writing effective descriptions of images is an important skill in itself. If you're developing a Web site that uses images, provide a written description of each image when coding the site. Doing so makes the site accessible to screen readers that are used by visually impaired people. An analysis of what the visual image is communicating—the rhetorical features of the visual.
Analysis in Writing
Performing an analysis usually requires you to make close observations or conduct research so that you will have a command of your subject. Writing an analysis forces you to put your understanding of that subject into your own words. The kind of analytical writing you do in your professional life will depend on your career, yet the odds are that at some point you will be asked to do an analysis and write a report on your findings. For example, an attorney analyzes legal rulings, the strengths and weaknesses of a client's case, and the arguments presented in court. A physician analyzes her patient's symptoms as she attempts to diagnose the illness and prescribe a cure.
Parts of a Complete Draft: Introduction
Regardless of your organizational approach, begin with a strong introduction that captures your readers' attention and introduces the subject you are analyzing. Explain (briefly) why an analysis of your subject might be of interest. For example, in Kerry Magro's analysis, he notes how fascinated people are with the Sheldon Cooper character on The Big Bang Theory. Provide a brief outline of what most people know about your subject. Explain (briefly) why your analysis is important. You may want to look at how the topic affects one person and then generalize to show how it affects many people. Provide a fact about the subject you are analyzing that will surprise or concern your readers
Primary or Field Research
Research that you yourself conducts. Primary author of the information or you are getting info directly from a primary source. Interviews, surveys or other fieldwork, like observations. Show personal or highly specific examples of an issue, or to further support the general claims found in secondary research. Focus your topic and consider alternative methods of gaining info to help support your ideas.
WPA Outcomes
Rhetorical Knowledge, Critical Thinking, Reading and Composing, Processes, and Knowledge of Conventions.
Organizing Structures: Classification
Start with a question about your subject that readers probably do not know the answer to. Explain why knowing the answer to this question will benefit your readers. Use the writing strategy of classification to explain your subject, labeling and explaining each aspect or part. Provide specific examples to illustrate each category. Conclude by showing how the aspects or parts function together to make up the whole of your subject.
Persistence in Writing
Successful writers are persistent. They don't accept quick or easy answers. Instead, they take the time to delve deeply and thoughtfully into their subject. Since effective analytical writing is thorough, using persistence to examine and explain as many details as possible is necessary. If you are working in a field that has particular procedures in place, you have an obligation to use persistence in following the accepted procedures faithfully. For example, if you are working in a scientific field, you will need to document everything you do—from taking notes on your process, to constructing drawings that illustrate the process, to verifying measurements with specific instruments.
Visual Analysis
To analyze an image, ask the same questions you would ask if you were to analyze a verbal text: What are the elements of the visual that make it work? How do those various aspects function together, complementing one another, to have the intended effect?
Incorporating Numerical Data
When writers incorporate numerical data from sources, they do not need to enclose numbers in quotation marks because it is not possible to paraphrase numbers. However, if a writer uses the exact words of a source to comment on those data, then quotation marks are required. When integrating numerical data into your writing projects, keep in mind the following guidelines: Double-check the source to make certain that you have reported the data accurately. Do not place numbers in quotation marks unless you include commentary from the source. Indicate the source in the body of your text and in your list of works cited or references.
Editing: Wordiness
Wordiness—using more words than necessary—is a common concern for writers and their readers. Wordy sentences take longer to read, and having a large number of them in your paper will increase your reader's workload and decrease your paper's effectiveness. Work with two peers to edit one another's papers for wordiness. Use the track-changes and comment features in your word-processing program to make your edits and suggestions. Ask yourself questions like "Is the writer repeating herself?" and "Has the writer included phrases that don't add meaning to the sentence?" Circle sentences that can be made more concise, and make suggestions on how to tighten them.
