Any topic (writer’s choice)

For this critical analysis essay, you can choose any piece in our text from Unit 1 Literature of Exploration and Discovery or Unit 2 Literature of Colonial American in the online textbook, whether or not we have read and studied it, whether or not you have written a log on it.

Your essay should include the following crucial ingredients for any critical analysis and should be 750 to 1000 words (roughly 3 to 4 typed double-spaced pages using Times New Roman 12 point font) not including the Works Cited page:

Brief introduction– how you capture your readers’ attention
Interpretation– what meaning did you find in the story/poem
Thesis statement — an argumentative statement about your interpretation
Supporting points– at least three — that back up your argument about your interpretation
Make sure you cite them correctly, using MLA in-text citations
Conclusion– what you will leave your readers thinking about
Works Cited– follow the MLA guide
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Guidelines for the Critical Paper

A critical paper is not a review or summary. Avoid long plot summaries. Assume that your reader is familiar with the work. Dont summarize, analyze! (Ask how and why.)

In the introduction, use the author’s full name and the title of the work. After that, when you refer to the author, use his/her last name. Using the first name is too informal, and this is a formal paper.

Every paper should have a title. Try to reflect the goods in the paper in the title. This is the readers first clue to the content and your argument. If you cant do this, it may mean that your paper is not focused yet.

Follow the standard five-paragraph essay form hopefully that you learned in 5th grade. Its still a good form! Introduction with Thesis, three Body Paragraphs, Conclusion. If youre writing a longer paper, you will need more than five paragraphs, but the rest is the same. Each body paragraph starts with a topic sentence, and the paragraph should support that topic sentence. If you are writing a longer paper, you may have two or three paragraphs on one topic. Thats fine. Just make sure that when you switch to a new topic, you write a new topic sentence as the first sentence in that paragraph. 

The introduction should be at least four or five sentences that lead to your thesis. Start off with some general statements, something that will gain the interest of the reader, and give a clear transition to your thesis or statement of purpose. Remember, this is an argument: make that obvious from the thesis statement. (Be sure your thesis statement is not trying to argue what happened in the story; those are facts. You are trying to make a case about the meaning of the whole thing based on your reading.)  The only way to win is to put forth evidence that supports your claim.

In the body of the paper, use evidence from the text to support your thesis statement. Quote material as long as it supports your point, but dont quote every point. That gets tedious to read.

Never, ever, just drop a quote in the text. Always introduce it and tell readers how it fits into your thesis.

Quotes of more than four lines (which should be a very rare thing and only occur in longer essays (more than 5 pages) should be blocked. Be sure to look this up so you will format it and cite it correctly. Use the 2016 MLA guide.

You need to document your citations from the story. Use MLA style in-text citations for this and a Works Cited page on which you provide the full reference for the book the quote is taken from. The in-text citation provides the last name of the author of the book in parentheses, following the sentence in which the quotation occurs.

In the conclusion, make a grander statement about the work and the world or something. Leave your reader thinking. This is the part that should answer the question So What? Do use a clear ending sentence that obviously closes the paper. Dont summarize the points. This is a short paper, so readers do not need to have things repeated at the end.

In this paper, first person will be fine, if that works better for you. Dont use you; that actually refers to the reader and can be distracting; dont use it for a person or one. In fact, there are very, very few instances where you can be used effectively in an academic paper. Using first person keeps the paper more active and interesting, removing some of the clunkiness that shows up when we are trying to control it with 3rd person. Most academic work is moving to 1st person today.

Avoid general terms like they, people, society, our country. Be specific about who they are.

For literature analysis papers, use present tense when discussing the story; watch tense switching problems because that can happen easily in papers like this. Ask someone if you are unsure.

LINK TO ONLINE TEXTBOOK IM USING, https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/

 

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