Analytical | English homework help

Since it is crucial that you find the right topic to analyze in your analytical essay, let’s use your journal this week to help you find just that right topic. Please read through the section entitled “Narrowing Down: Critical Thinking,” on pages 211-212 in our text, focusing particularly on the sub-sections “What’s Promising Material and What Isn’t?” and “Questions about Audience and Purpose.”

What’s Promising Material and What Isn’t?

First thoughts? As our text directs, “Spend some time rereading, observing, or studying the work you’ve tentatively chosen . . . collect notes (e.g., key passages, lists of observations, descriptions) . . . Then . . . fastwrite for as long as you can, exploring and speculating about possible interpretations. . . . This writing should be very open ended; you don’t need to come to conclusions yet.” [You can use a double-entry journal if you’d like or just first collect your notes and then follow your notes with your fastwrite about those notes. 400 words minimum.]

Can you refine your question? Try out various connections between your topic of analysis and the world of ideas by completing the following sentence at least five times, each time focusing on some different aspect or element of the thing you’re analyzing: “The (name an aspect or element of your subject) seems to be representing certain ideas about ____________.”

Questions About Audience and Purpose

Spend some time coming up with at least one way that you can “interest readers in the work you’re analyzing, especially if they’re unfamiliar with it. Why should they care about your analysis . . . ? Think about ways in which the thing you’re studying is relevant to understanding everyday experience.” (100 words minimum)