ANALYSIS — Introduction & Exploration
Unlike narrative writing, which focuses on things and events, analytical
writing focuses on ideas about and relationships between things. Writing
analysis involves answering questions, but often analysis means discovering
what your questions are. Discovering new questions is often the first
step to analysis. Answering those questions is the process you then use in
subsequent steps in your essay.
Research asks you to weave together a variety of sources into a new
synthesis of your own thought. In this essay, you will practice weaving
together diverse strands into a coherent whole.
For the next two essays, you will need to look at and analyze your own ideas,
analyze the writing of others published in books or periodicals to connect
with your own ideas, and create a synthesis of thought in an analytical essay.
This includes browsing and reading through and selecting passages from
published sources. You will select which published writings are appropriate
for you, depending on the topics and themes on which you choose to focus.
The topic with which to start your focus will be an area involving:
a) what the USA is doing wrong,
b) what the USA is doing right
c) both of the above – a combination of them.
You may begin with a general area of interest, such as health, the economy,
consciousness (from our text), the environment and sustainability, family,
gender, gender preference, education, race relations, media, crime, etc. You
may overlap two or more topics and the area of overlap will create a more
effective focus. In any case, for a 3-5 page essay, you will need to narrow
your topic. We will explore methods of narrowing the topic, including the
search for sources.