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Text Analysis Guidelines

The textual analysis essay involves analyzing a published article and making observations about the choices the writer makes and assertions about the effectiveness of those choices.

A textual analysis essay must

· Summarize the article briefly

· Identify the audience and main claim of the piece

· Include a main claim in a thesis statement that forecasts the organization of your paper: How does the author succeed in making his/her point? How does she fail to make his/her point? What aspects of the piece make it successful and not successful?

· Discuss the author’s choices, giving specific examples from the article, and evaluating the effectiveness of the choices. Some examples of choices you might discuss include

· Organization

· What information comes first? Middle? Last? What information receives the most emphasis by virtue of its placement?

· Types of evidence cited, for example

· Statistics

· Research results

· Anecdotal information

· Expert testimony

· Language used

· Connotations of terms

· Word choices (diction)

· Level of formality

· Definition of key terms

· Repetition of words or phrases

· Context

· Time of publication

· What else was happening in the world at the time of its publication?

· What have others said about this topic?

· Is the author responding to others’ perspectives?

· Place of publication

· What are the social and political leanings of this publication?

· Writer’s personal interest in and relationship to the topic

· Appeals to ethos, pathos, and/or logos

· Learn more about the topic by finding additional 1-2 sources about the same subject.

· In the body of the essay, compare and/or contrast this writer’s approach to the topic to how others wrote about the same topic. Are these other writers more or less successful in discussing the topic, and why?

· Write in-text citations for all sources (the article being analyzed and the additional sources you discuss) wherever you refer to them in your essay.

· Write full citations for all sources used in the paper on a Works Cited page using MLA format