1. Essay Analysis Notes

2. Types of essays:
Narrative: an essay that tells a story of an event or experience.
Descriptive: an essay that describes a person, place, event or object.
Expository: an essay that explains a subject.

3. Characteristics of Narrative Essays
Involves telling a story; it has plot.
The events are arranged in some suitable time sequence.
It has an exposition (introduction to characters, conflict and setting), rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.
Point of view.
5 W’s – who, what, when, where and why.
Character development and change.

4. Chronological order.
Suspense (may contain).
Flashback (may contain).
Tone – establish at beginning.
Diction.
Style – various sentence types.
Dialogue: advances the narrative; sets tone and atmosphere, reflects the nature of the characters; develops relationships between the characters.

5. Figurative language (may contain)– simile; metaphor; and personification.
Coherence.
Unity.
Temporal references – refers to time – later; hour after hour; later that evening.

6. Characteristics of Descriptive Essays
Involves observing a person, object, or scene and relating what has been observed to the reader.
Technical description: deals with facts and avoids references to any feelings. It deals with concrete things – height, weight, color.
Emotive description – reveals feelings that the person or object being described evokes in the observer. It uses figurative language. It also evokes use of colourful language such as vivid nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

7. Dominant impression – such as beauty, loneliness, excitement, confusion or fear.
Imagery – sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.

8. 5 types of expository essays:
(1) Example and Illustration – are used to support an idea, reinforce a contention or clarify some topic.
(2) Cause and Effect – are interdependent relationships; they attempt to answer the why and what of a situation; the cause is considered the reason behind a situation; the effect is what happens because of the cause.
(3) Process Analysis – gives directions and/or simply provides information about how to perform a particular task; how something works or happens.

9. (4) Classification and Division – is a means whereby items, information and ideas are organized; classification sorts or puts things in categories; division attempts to analyze the parts or sections into which something is divided.
(5) Comparison and Contrast – uses similarities and differences, or a combination of the two, to illustrate and discuss an idea.

10.  Argumentative/Persuasive: essays that argue for or against a topic and may contain a call to action. It tries to win the reader over to an idea or point of view.

11. Common Terms used to analyze essays:
Purpose: The reason an author writes an essay. For example, purpose could be: to entertain, to create awareness, to analyze, to explain…
Audience: For whom the essay is written? Does it target a general or specific group?
Tone: The author’s attitude toward his/her subject. (serious, satirical, etc.)

12. Coherence: creating a smooth flow between sentences and between paragraphs.
There are four ways to create coherence:
(1) Use transitions: however, also, although, whereas, nevertheless, on the other hand…
(2) Repeat key words/phrases: these would be words/phrases linked to the main topic. For example, an essay on the topic of school may repeat key words such as: school, students, teachers, etc.

13. (3) Use pronoun reference: I, me you, he, him, she, her, it, we, us, they, them.
(4) Use parallel structure: using similar grammatical structure (usually within a sentence that is listing ideas). For example:
Error: I love to jog, swimming, and skiing.
Revision: I love jogging, swimming, and skiing.

14. Emphasis: Means that important elements in a paragraph are made to stand out. Emphasis can be achieved by using these devices:
- A forceful topic sentence
- An effective conclusion (clinching sentence)
- Placement of key ideas near the beginning and end
- Elaboration with supporting details and examples
- Comparison and contrast
- Purposeful repetition of words and phrases
- Repetition of words with similar meaning (synonyms)
- Repetition of grammatical structure (parallelism)
- Repetition and restatement of sentences

15. Other emphatic devices:
listing: numerical order; bullets.
Font: bold; unusual capitalization; italics; underline.
Punctuation – dash; colon; exclamation mark; ellipsis; brackets.
Short sentences; sentence fragments.

16. Unity: oneness of effect (staying on topic).
Techniques for creating a unified essay:
(1) Strong thesis statement.
(2) Use of topic sentences.
(3) Relevant supporting examples.
(4) Repetition – key words and phrases.
(5) Closing by Return.

17. Language Style
Jargon – the language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession or group (ex. medical jargon).
Colloquial - Words, phrases and expressions used in everyday conversation; it is relaxed and informal rather than literary and formal.
Dialect - A way of speaking or a variation on language unique to a particular people or to one region or social group.
Euphemisms – the substitution of a mild, indirect or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh or blunt (ex. “To pass away” is a euphemism for “to die”).

18. Formal - Often more serious treatment of a subject, sticking to the rules of English grammar.
Informal- Often expressed in conversational style.
Slang - Words and phrases vary because of particular age groups, geographical locations, occupations, etc. (ex. Flipping out).