1. Applying Analytical Writing Patterns to Essay #2

2. Effectiveness Check: Characteristic 1 Characteristic 1: A Question that asks you to take a closer look. (p. 142 of Everyone’s an Author) Look over the draft of your essay and see if you can easily tell what the question is you will be exploring. Were you able to easily identify the question your essay will explore more deeply? Does your essay actually answer that question in a logical way that lays out your support for your answer? If not, how could you improve? Are there any paragraphs that aren’t about this question you’ve identified? If so, get rid of them. If you weren’t able to easily identify the specific question, your essay may not have a narrow enough focus. Finally, the result of your analysis should be an answer to the question you asked. That answer would work well as a thesis statement, and it should be in the first paragraph of your essay, and it might contain the core of your evaluation of your product.

3. Effectiveness Check: Characteristic 2 Characteristic 2: Some description of the subject you are analyzing. (p. 143-144 of EaA) Do you give your readers a brief description of the subject you’ll be analyzing? How long is it? Does it tell someone who is unfamiliar with your subject what they need to know in order to understand the rest of your argument? When I give the signal, find someone in the class who was not in your peer group and doesn’t know much about your topic. Let them read your description of your subject. Do they feel like they know enough to continue with the essay now? Do they feel like you gave them too much information?

4. Effectiveness Check: Characteristic 3 Characteristic 3: Evidence drawn from close examination of the subject. Does your essay contain a close examination of the subject? – Are your points about your subject, or are they grounded in specific examples of scenes, dishes, products, etc.? – What can you do to take a closer look at your subject? How could you dig more deeply into it?

5. Effectiveness Check: Characteristics 4 and 5 Characteristic 4: Insight gained from your analysis. In your draft, find and mark any places where you offer your reader insight gained from your analysis. Do you explain the significance of the details you have noticed? If you can’t find any places where you’ve done this, you need to add them in. Sharing your insights with your readers is one of the central purposes of this essay. Where might you do that? Characteristic 5: Clear, precise language. Is your language, especially your thesis, clear and precise? What can you do to increase the precision of your word choice?