How to Write an Analytic Essay
Definition
For you to define analytic essay, you have to know what is an essay? Unlike other essays, an analytic paper will entail detail explanation of the smaller things to shed lights on the larger picture. Most students usually miss the point when it comes to the writing of an analytic essay because instead of analysis, they end up writing a summary since they cannot understand the meaning of analytic essay.
In writing an analytic essay, you have to avoid generalization, and instead, you take up one point and focus on it deeply to come up with ideas for your work. To write a good analytic essay, you have to pay attention to small observations surrounding your topic and try to relate its significance to what you are talking about in your essay.
Topics and ideas for an analytic paper
In the generation of ideas to write in an analytic essay, you have to be creative and apply critical thinking. Any topic can be given for analysis; it is the ability of the writer to expound on it and come up with ideas. Creativity will help you formulate ideas from scratch and support the claims. Most of the topics for analytic essay are usually phrases that have a deeper meaning that the actual meaning of the words. A good example of a topic that can be given for an analytic essay is a proverb. You will be required to explain the meaning of the proverb then bring out the relation of the proverb to your situation to improve the understanding of the reader. Examples of topics for analytic essays include:
- Obesity
- Chess competition rules
- How to lose weight naturally
- Significance of Halloween dressing
- Traditional culture
- Causes of global warming
An analytic essay is usually dependent on illustrations to support your claim and convince the reader to their satisfaction. The main objective of writing analytic essays is usually to educate your reader about something by making them understand a topic. There are a variety of categories of analytic essays that you may be asked to write on as a writer, and you should be able to classify the essay you are given to understand the outline.
Read also: How to start essays?
Rhetorical analysis essay
In this type of essay, you are required to bring out the rhetorical situation of the topic to the understanding of the reader. To come up with a good rhetorical analysis essay, you have to plan your work and know how to bring the mind of the reader slowly until they understand your claims. You have to start with an introduction that is captivating to the reader, and it should cover the following concerns:
- Explain the rhetorical situation in your topic so that the reader is not confused.
- Be certain to give a small background or a history on the topic to let the reader understand where your argument arises.
- Finally, give a small touch on the rhetorical situation surrounding your topic as a wrap up for your introduction.
After the introduction you should come up with a thesis statement. In your thesis you need not give detailed explanation of your points, you just need to go straight to what is to be covered in the essay. Your thesis statement should be able to make the reader long to read the body paragraphs to understand the topic more, the success of the same can be necessitated by the use of suspense.
The next step is the body of your rhetorical essay. There are different ways of planning your body paragraphs depending on the expected length of your work. You can choose to use spatial order or chronological order. For spatial order, you will need to plan your points so that they can easily be differentiated in a page whereas, in chronological order, the arguments can be distinguished by screens or pages.
When it concludes, you will need to restate the aim of your paper, and the points in your work then make a summary to wrap up everything.
Literary analysis essays
You are likely to come across this kind of essay while at college or high school level of education. To be precise, while undertaking a course in education at the college you may be asked to read a short piece and analyze it, then the examiner will test your understanding by asking you questions. You can also be asked to write about the story in essay form and cover all the themes in the book. While writing on the literary analysis, you will need to know the setting and the plot of the piece you are writing. On literary analysis, you have to include emotions and explain the reason why a certain decision is made in a story. You have to give your opinion on why certain situation happens to the reader. Literary analysis is mostly based on storylines in different literature resources.
Process analysis essay
A process includes procedural step-by-step stages that something undergoes to come up to completion. While formulating ideas for your essay, you have to find answers to questions such as, how is a process done? Or how something works? In the analysis of this type of essay, you will need to have all the facts about the process and put them in their correct order. Some of the sample topics for process analysis essay include: purification process, fabrication process, canning process, how to cook different foods, among many possible others. You have to understand the sequential steps to make it clear to the reader in the process. The main format used in writing process essays constitute, introduction, the body, and the conclusion. In the introduction, you should explain the actual process and its significance. In the body paragraphs, you should list all the tools and resources used in the process and then finally state the steps in sequential order.
Character analysis essay
Character analysis essay entails describing the traits of a certain personality in a story. You have to state a trait then support it with an illustration in the story. Most of the character analysis usually goes hand in hand with literature analysis. In literature analysis students are usually supposed to read a novel and write a summary of it, but for character analysis, your concentration is narrowed to a specific character in the piece. To come up with a good essay, you have to ensure that you support your traits with illustration and examples in the story. Most of the character analysis cases are usually based on novels; most of the topics for character analysis are usually novels or books whereby there is a story narration being followed.
Poetry analysis essay
Many poems use sarcasm so that the reader can think critically to understand and relate the statement. The meanings of the poem and its objectives are usually hidden by employing the use of different language techniques such as inversion. The main objective of the poetry analysis essay is usually to explain the hidden meaning to the reader in a simple, understandable manner. In writing a poetry analysis essay, you have to be keen on every grammar technique used by the poet lest you miss out on some important points. Poetry mainly uses symbolism aspect, whereby a poet can use non-living things to symbolize a certain behavior that exists in the society. In analyzing a poem, you should first state and be able to identify the art of language used by the poet then go on and explain how the point relates it to real life.
Causal analysis essay
Everything that transpires in the day to day life of people has a cause and effect. Most of the topics for causal essay touch on problems affecting people in the society. The main parts of the causal essay include a thesis statement, an introduction, the body and the conclusion. In your thesis statement, you should give a rough overview of the problem and raise the urge of the reader to understand the cause of the problem. In the introduction, do not touch on the cause of the problem because you will have to make the body boring to the reader as they will have already found out the intention of the essay. You should also include the effect of the problem to lengthen the essay and satisfy the reader.
Creating a thesis
A thesis statement is a short sentence that gives the reader an overview of what to expect in the essay. A thesis should not be more than one sentence because it is a summary of your body points. A thesis statement for an analytic essay involves breaking down an idea into components and putting it in summary form. A thesis statement should:
- Be specific – the statement should not include an explanation of your ideas, it should be specific to the points that you will write your essay.
- Be placed at the end of the introduction – the introduction is usually the first paragraph; a thesis should come immediately after the first paragraph so that it acts as an introduction to the body. It is the thesis that prepares the reader psychologically for the analysis part.
- Be proofread after completion of writing the essay – you may have come up with other points as you continue to write yet your thesis statement is already there, so it is advisable to go through your thesis and make sure that it covers all points stated in the body.
Analytic Essay outline
Just like any other essay format an analytic essay constitute an informal outline of an introduction, body and the conclusion.
- Introduction
In the introduction, you should be able to give a small background story about the topic you are analyzing and some theories about the topic. An introduction should be able to attract the reader towards the body. Immediately after the introduction, you should give a thesis statement. A thesis statement should be clear and to the point. The reader should be able to understand the significance of the analysis. After the introduction, you should use a good transition to move to the body. There are different transition words for an analytic essay that you should use to create a good flow of your work.
- The body
In the body paragraph, develop a topic sentence at the start before explaining your point. The topic sentence should reflect what the section is all about. After the topic sentence come up with a claim for the section. Every claim should be supported by evidence and support. The evidence is usually used to back up the claim so that the reader can be convinced. In the analysis, you have to narrow down to each point and dig deep on all information that pertains it before proceeding to the next point. Before you complete your paragraph, you have to wrap up your evidence with the topic sentence.
- The conclusion
In writing the conclusion to your analytic essay, you will need to restate the points mentioned in the body paragraphs in analytic summary form. In conclusion, you can also include recommendations and what you think about the topic. You also need to restate the thesis of the essay and illustrate to the reader that you have indeed answered all questions brought out in the introduction part.
Examples of analytic essays
It is good to go through various samples of analytic essays to acquire skills and correct formats to use. When you read through an analytic essay from another author, you can be able to know how to employ different formats in your analytic essay. There are different sources on the internet where you can access examples of analytic essays. Some of the resources that you can get these samples include journals, articles, and magazines. You should go through various categories of analytic essays to improve your prowess in writing them.
