Chapter 10: Analysis

To analyze is to examine meaningful parts of a subject and explain how those parts relate to one another and to a larger whole.

A summary tells readers what a source says. A description records what something looks, sounds, or feels like. Analysis uses those observations as evidence for an interpretation.

A useful analytical process often includes three connected moves:

1. Identify a meaningful part or pattern.
2. Interpret how that part functions or relates to other parts.
3. Explain what the relationship reveals and why it matters.

Key Insight: Analysis does not merely break a subject into pieces. It uses those pieces to develop a better understanding of the whole.

The part-to-whole relationship

Imagine taking apart a model castle as a way to understand the part-to-whole relationship in analysis. Imagine taking apart a model castle. Looking closely at individual blocks, connections, hidden supports, repeated shapes, and structural choices can help you understand how the castle holds together and why it appears as it does.

Analysis involves that close examination. The goal, however, is not to leave the castle scattered across the table. You return to the whole with a clearer explanation of how it works.

The same movement applies to writing:

• a repeated word may contribute to a text’s tone;
• a camera angle may shape how viewers perceive authority;
• the order of evidence may make one explanation seem more important than another;
• a map projection may enlarge some regions while minimizing others;
• a platform default may make one action easier than competing actions;
• a policy exception may reveal which users the policy expects and which it overlooks.

The part matters because of what it helps you understand about the whole.

Analysis and synthesis

Analysis and synthesis often work together. Analysis examines parts and relationships. Synthesis brings parts, findings, or sources together to form a larger conclusion.

This chapter focuses on analysis. Chapter 13 will develop synthesis more fully, especially the work of placing multiple sources into conversation.

These moves may appear in the same paragraph, but they perform different jobs.

One subject, four different moves

Consider this original Scholar’s Compass scenario:

A college tutoring webpage places a large Schedule an Appointment button at the top of the page. Information about drop-in tutoring appears beneath it. Accessibility accommodations and transportation information appear near the bottom in smaller text.

Summary:

The webpage explains how students can obtain tutoring through appointments or drop-in services.

Description:

The appointment button is large and appears at the top, while accessibility and transportation information appear lower on the page in smaller text.

Analysis:

By placing the appointment button first and giving it greater visual weight, the page presents scheduled tutoring as the expected route into the service. The lower placement of accessibility and transportation information may make those needs seem secondary, even though they may determine whether some students can use tutoring at all.

Evaluation:

The page communicates the primary appointment process clearly, but its information hierarchy could better support students whose access depends on accommodations or transportation.

The analytical version depends on description, but it goes further by interpreting the design relationship and explaining its possible significance.

Analysis is not merely personal reaction

A personal response can begin inquiry:

I found the page frustrating.

Analysis asks what produced that response and whether the evidence supports a larger interpretation:

The page requires students to open three separate sections before they can compare appointment and drop-in options, a structure that may make the service feel more complicated than it is.

The second sentence gives readers something observable and interpretable. It turns reaction into a claim that can be examined.

A practical way to develop analysis is to move through three stages.

1. Observation: What do I notice?

Observation identifies specific evidence without yet deciding exactly what it means.

You might notice:

• a repeated word or image;
• a contrast in tone;
• an unusual example;
• a shift in point of view;
• the position of a button or heading;
• a pattern in data;
• an exception to a rule;
• a missing perspective;
• a change in music, pacing, or camera angle;
• a barrier or pathway in a designed space.

Strong observations are specific enough for another reader to locate or verify.

2. Interpretation: What might this detail mean or do?

Interpretation proposes a relationship, function, or implication.

Ask:

• What does this choice emphasize?
• What contrast does it create?
• What expectation does it establish?
• What pattern does it continue or interrupt?
• What response might it invite?
• What assumption does it depend on?
• What does it make easier, harder, visible, or invisible?
• How does it affect the larger structure or message?

Interpretation should remain tied to evidence. It is not a license to invent secret intentions or meanings that the subject cannot reasonably support.

3. Significance: Why does this interpretation matter?

Significance connects the interpretation to a larger claim, question, consequence, or insight.

Ask:

• Why should readers care about this pattern?
• What does it help us understand about the whole subject?
• What larger issue does it reveal?
• What consequence follows from the relationship?
• How does it support, complicate, or qualify my thesis?
• What would be overlooked without this analysis?

The three-move pattern

Observation: The tutoring webpage gives the appointment button greater size and higher placement than the drop-in information.

Interpretation: The design establishes scheduled appointments as the default or preferred form of tutoring.

Significance: That hierarchy may shape student behavior and may unintentionally obscure a more flexible option for students whose work, transportation, or caregiving schedules make appointments difficult.

Key Insight: Observation gives analysis something solid to stand on. Interpretation explains the relationship. Significance answers the reader who asks, “So what?”

Analysis usually grows from questions rather than instant certainty.

What?

Use what questions to identify the subject and evidence.

• What is repeated?
• What changes?
• What is emphasized?
• What is absent?
• What seems surprising or inconsistent?
• What claim, example, image, sound, number, or design feature deserves attention?

How?

Use how questions to examine function and relationship.

• How does the writer move from one idea to another?
• How does the evidence support the conclusion?
• How does the design guide attention?
• How does a repeated image affect tone?
• How does the policy define who qualifies?
• How does the platform encourage one action over another?

Why?

Use why questions to explore purpose, cause, assumption, or consequence.

• Why might this example appear first?
• Why is this term defined while another remains undefined?
• Why might the creator choose this medium?
• Why does the pattern change at this point?
• Why might the result differ across groups or situations?

You may not be able to prove a creator’s private intention. Phrase interpretations responsibly: may suggest, appears designed to, emphasizes, creates the impression, or could encourage.

So what?

Use so what questions to develop stakes.

• What larger understanding follows from this analysis?
• Why is this relationship important?
• What does it reveal about the subject, audience, institution, system, or culture?
• What consequence might readers otherwise miss?
• How does the finding change or complicate the original question?

A paragraph that answers only what often remains descriptive. Analysis develops through how, why, and so what.

Students sometimes wait for a dramatic hidden meaning to leap from the text wearing a tiny cape. Analysis is usually less theatrical. It develops by tracing relationships that are already present but not yet explained.

Patterns

Look for repetition, similarity, accumulation, sequence, or recurring absence.

Patterns may involve:

• words or phrases;
• images, symbols, or examples;
• types of evidence;
• sentence structures;
• colors, sounds, gestures, or camera angles;
• user prompts or notifications;
• outcomes within data;
• rules and exceptions;
• pathways through a physical or digital space.

Ask what the pattern makes noticeable and what larger effect it creates.

Breaks in patterns

A change may be as meaningful as repetition.

Notice when:

• the tone shifts;
• a speaker changes position;
• an expected example is missing;
• a visual style changes;
• a rule suddenly includes an exception;
• the pace accelerates or slows;
• one group receives different treatment;
• a familiar interface introduces friction.

Ask why the break matters at that moment.

Choices

Analysis considers what a creator, institution, system, or designer selected from among possible alternatives.

Choices include:

• wording;
• evidence;
• examples;
• organization;
• framing;
• definitions;
• visuals;
• medium;
• placement;
• timing;
• defaults;
• categories;
• measurements;
• boundaries.

A choice does not need to be conscious or malicious to have an effect. Analytical writing should distinguish between an observable choice or structure and claims about private intention.

Relationships

Meaning often emerges between parts.

Useful relationships include:

• cause and effect;
• problem and response;
• comparison and contrast;
• claim and evidence;
• rule and exception;
• individual and institution;
• design and behavior;
• word and image;
• appearance and reality;
• stated purpose and actual outcome;
• part and whole.

Assumptions

An assumption is an idea treated as already accepted or true.

Ask:

• What does this text assume the audience already believes?
• What kind of user does this design imagine?
• What counts as normal, credible, efficient, safe, or successful?
• What conditions are taken for granted?
• Which alternatives are not considered?

Chapter 6 provides a deeper framework for examining values, assumptions, and ideology. In analysis, assumptions often explain the bridge between evidence and conclusion.

Consequences

Analysis can examine what follows from a choice, structure, argument, or pattern.

Consequences may be:

• practical;
• emotional;
• social;
• ethical;
• political;
• economic;
• environmental;
• educational;
• interpretive.

Avoid treating every possible consequence as inevitable. Explain the conditions under which it may occur and the evidence that makes it plausible.

The current chapter introduces Bloom’s Taxonomy, a model that names several kinds of cognitive activity. Revised versions commonly use verbs such as:

• remember;
• understand;
• apply;
• analyze;
• evaluate;
• create.

The model can help students recognize that analytical writing draws on several forms of thinking. A writer may remember context, understand a source, apply a concept, analyze relationships, evaluate an interpretation, and create a new argument within the same assignment.

These activities do not always occur in a neat staircase. Writers often move back and forth among them. A new observation may require more research. An attempted explanation may expose a gap in understanding. Drafting may generate a better thesis.

Bloom’s Taxonomy in the revised HTML chapter

The existing interactive Bloom’s visualizer can remain as an optional support, but its framing should be revised so that it does not present thinking as a rigid ladder or make Bloom’s model the chapter’s primary definition of analysis.

Key Insight: A model can help name parts of thinking, but analysis becomes visible through the questions you ask, the evidence you examine, and the relationships you explain.

Analysis rarely arrives fully formed. It develops through inquiry, recording, testing, and revision.

Step 1: Clarify the assignment and analytical question

Determine what kind of analysis the situation requires.

Ask:

• What subject am I examining?
• What question or problem should the analysis address?
• What concepts or criteria does the assignment require?
• What kinds of evidence are appropriate?
• Am I analyzing one subject, comparing subjects, applying a lens, explaining causes, or evaluating effects?

Step 2: Encounter the whole before dividing it

Read, watch, listen to, visit, or examine the subject for its overall direction.

Before isolating parts, identify:

• the main message, function, or experience;
• the broad structure;
• the central tension or question;
• the context in which the subject exists.

Analysis without a sense of the whole can become a jar of interesting fragments.

Step 3: Record observations

Annotate or create a working log.

Record:

• repeated features;
• surprising details;
• contrasts;
• shifts;
• questions;
• connections;
• absences;
• possible assumptions;
• evidence that challenges your first impression.

Keep observation and interpretation separate at first when doing so helps you avoid premature conclusions.

Step 4: Group observations into patterns

Do several observations point toward the same issue or relationship?

Possible groups might include:

• choices that establish authority;
• features that guide attention;
• examples that frame responsibility as individual or institutional;
• repeated images of confinement;
• data showing unequal effects;
• design elements that encourage speed over reflection.

Grouping helps transform a list of details into a possible claim.

Step 5: Develop possible interpretations

For each pattern, ask:

• What function might these parts perform?
• What larger effect do they create together?
• What assumption connects them?
• What tension or contradiction appears?
• What alternative interpretation is possible?

Write more than one possibility before settling on a claim.

Step 6: Test the interpretation

Return to the evidence.

Ask:

• Does the interpretation account for the important details?
• Am I ignoring evidence that complicates it?
• Have I confused sequence with causation?
• Is the claim more certain than the evidence permits?
• Could another explanation fit the evidence better?
• What additional evidence would strengthen or weaken the claim?

Testing does not make analysis timid. It makes it trustworthy.

Step 7: Develop a working analytical claim

A strong analytical claim states more than a topic or observation. It explains a relationship and points toward significance.

A flexible pattern is:

[Subject or creator] uses, organizes, or reveals [specific pattern or relationship] in a way that [interpretation], which matters because [larger significance or consequence].

Use the pattern to generate thinking, then revise it into natural language.

Step 8: Draft and revise

Drafting often changes the analysis. A sentence that is difficult to explain may expose a weak connection. A paragraph may reveal a better pattern than the one named in the original thesis.

Treat the thesis as a working interpretation. Revise it as the evidence and reasoning become clearer.

Evidence is necessary, but evidence does not explain itself.

A writer must show readers:

1. what the evidence is;
2. which part of it matters;
3. how that part supports the interpretation;
4. why the interpretation matters to the paragraph and thesis.

An evidence-to-explanation ladder

A developed analytical passage often moves through these levels:

1. Claim: State the paragraph’s analytical point.
2. Context: Provide only the background readers need.
3. Evidence: Quote, paraphrase, describe, or present the relevant material.
4. Observation: Direct attention to a specific feature.
5. Interpretation: Explain how the feature works or what it suggests.
6. Significance: Connect the interpretation to the larger claim.
7. Link: Show how the finding leads to the paragraph’s next step or the essay’s larger purpose.

Chapter 4 explains how to prepare, present, cite, and integrate quotations and paraphrases. Chapter 10 focuses on what happens after the evidence enters the paragraph: the writer must interpret it.

A fictional practice source

For the examples below, imagine a fictional article about short-form video design by Jordan Lee. The article states:

“The next video begins before the viewer has fully reached the end of the current one, reducing the pause in which a person might decide to leave” (Lee 42).

Evidence dumping

Autoplay affects user choices. Lee writes, “The next video begins before the viewer has fully reached the end of the current one, reducing the pause in which a person might decide to leave” (42). This shows that autoplay affects user choices.

The passage includes a claim, quotation, and repeated conclusion, but it does not examine the wording or explain the mechanism.

Developed analysis

Autoplay may shape behavior not by forcing viewers to remain but by reducing the time available for a new decision. Lee notes that the next video begins before the current one has “fully reached the end,” narrowing the “pause” in which a viewer might leave (42). The timing matters because stopping now requires an active interruption of a process that has already continued. The design therefore shifts the default from deciding to watch another video to deciding to stop one that has begun, a small change that can accumulate across a longer session.

The developed version identifies the meaningful terms, explains the relationship between timing and choice, and connects that relationship to a larger conclusion.

Useful explanation prompts

After presenting evidence, ask:

• Which word, number, image, action, contrast, or pattern deserves attention?
• What does that detail do?
• How does it connect to my claim?
• What assumption makes the connection possible?
• What consequence follows?
• What alternative reading should I acknowledge?
• Why does this point matter beyond the evidence itself?

Key Insight: “This shows” is not analysis unless the sentence explains what the evidence shows, how it shows it, and why that relationship matters.

Chapter 9 explains paragraph design. An analytical paragraph applies that design to an interpretive claim.

A strong paragraph often includes:

• a focused analytical claim;
• necessary context;
• specific evidence;
• close attention to the evidence;
• interpretation of the relationship;
• explanation of significance;
• a link to the thesis or next idea.

Model analytical paragraph

The tutoring webpage’s information hierarchy presents scheduled appointments as the normal route into academic support. The large Schedule an Appointment button appears before the smaller section explaining drop-in tutoring. This difference in size and placement does more than organize the page: it gives one option greater visual authority and makes it available before students encounter alternatives. For students with predictable schedules, that pathway may be convenient. For students balancing changing work hours, transportation limits, or caregiving responsibilities, however, the less visible drop-in option may be the more usable service. The design therefore reveals a tension between administrative clarity and flexible access.

What the paragraph does

• The first sentence states an interpretation.
• The second identifies observable evidence.
• The third explains how visual hierarchy functions.
• The fourth and fifth consider different users and consequences.
• The final sentence identifies a larger tension.

Paragraph structure is flexible

Not every analytical paragraph requires the same number or order of sentences. Some evidence needs extensive context. A brief phrase may require several sentences of close explanation. A data set may require definition and comparison before interpretation.

The goal is not a formula. The goal is a visible line of reasoning.

Chapter 8 explains how thesis statements guide an essay. An analytical thesis presents an arguable interpretation based on evidence.

Topic statement

This essay will analyze a college tutoring webpage.

This names the task but does not present an interpretation.

Observation

The tutoring webpage uses different font sizes and places the appointment button near the top.

This identifies features but does not yet explain their relationship or significance.

Analytical thesis

By giving scheduled appointments greater visual prominence than drop-in, accessibility, and transportation information, the tutoring webpage presents a single pathway as the normal route into academic support, a hierarchy that creates clarity for some students while making flexible access less visible to others.

The analytical thesis identifies:

• the subject;
• the significant pattern;
• the interpretation;
• the tension or stakes.

A working-thesis framework

Try:

By [specific choice, feature, or pattern], [subject] [reveals, constructs, frames, emphasizes, complicates, or produces] [interpretation], which matters because [stakes, consequence, or larger insight].

Then revise the sentence so it sounds natural and accurately reflects the evidence.

A thesis should be open to revision

Analysis may begin with one pattern and discover another. The thesis should evolve as the writer tests interpretations and develops paragraphs.

A working thesis is not a contract signed in ink. It is the best current explanation of what the evidence appears to reveal.

Problem 1: Summary replaces analysis

Weak:

The article explains how the platform works and gives examples of autoplay and recommendations.

Repair: Select a specific feature and explain how it shapes the larger message, experience, or outcome.

Problem 2: Description stops before interpretation

Weak:

The button is large and blue.

Repair: Explain what the visual choice emphasizes, how it relates to surrounding elements, and why that hierarchy matters.

Problem 3: The writer labels a technique without explaining it

Weak:

The advertisement uses pathos.

Repair: Identify the image, language, sound, or story; name the emotion or value it invites; connect that effect to audience and purpose.

Problem 4: Evidence dumping

A paragraph includes quotations, examples, or statistics but gives readers little explanation.

Repair: Reduce the amount of evidence and expand the interpretation. Direct readers to the exact feature that matters.

Problem 5: The analysis restates the evidence

Weak:

This quote shows that the next video starts before the current one ends.

Repair: Explain how the timing changes the decision point and why that design relationship matters.

Problem 6: The claim depends on mind reading

Weak:

The designer wanted to trap every user.

Repair: Analyze observable effects and use qualified language.

Beginning the next video automatically may reduce the pause in which users reconsider whether to continue.

Problem 7: The interpretation is more certain than the evidence

Weak:

This design proves that autoplay causes addiction.

Repair: Match the claim to what the evidence can support.

This design may contribute to longer sessions by reducing natural stopping points.

Problem 8: Symbolism is asserted without support

Weak:

The blue button symbolizes sadness.

Repair: Establish a pattern, context, convention, or relationship that makes the interpretation plausible. Not every detail is a symbol.

Problem 9: Too many features compete in one paragraph

A paragraph mentions tone, imagery, data, layout, historical context, audience, and ideology without developing any one relationship.

Repair: Choose the feature or pattern most central to the paragraph’s claim. Move other analytical work into separate paragraphs when needed.

Problem 10: The “so what” disappears

The writer identifies an interesting pattern but never explains its stakes.

Repair: Ask what the pattern changes, reveals, complicates, or helps readers understand about the larger subject.

Problem 11: The writer ignores evidence that complicates the claim

Repair: Acknowledge exceptions or limits and revise the claim. Qualification often makes an interpretation more persuasive, not less.

Analytical writing does not require pretending that only one interpretation is possible.

A strong writer can ask:

• What else might this evidence suggest?
• What would a skeptical reader notice?
• Does another pattern complicate my claim?
• Under what conditions would my interpretation be less convincing?
• Which interpretation accounts for more of the evidence?

Example

One interpretation of the tutoring page might argue that the prominent appointment button privileges students with predictable schedules.

An alternative interpretation might argue that the design simply prioritizes the action most students need and places specialized information lower to prevent clutter.

A developed analysis could respond:

The page’s hierarchy may improve speed for students seeking appointments, but that efficiency is not neutral. By making flexible and access-related information less prominent, the design treats those needs as exceptions rather than as ordinary parts of tutoring access.

Considering an alternative helps the writer define the claim more precisely.

Key Insight: Analysis becomes stronger when it can explain why one interpretation fits the evidence better than plausible alternatives.

The same analytical habits travel across disciplines, although the evidence and conventions may differ.

Essays, stories, and speeches

Notice:

• diction;
• tone;
• imagery;
• examples;
• claims and evidence;
• organization;
• point of view;
• repetition;
• omissions;
• shifts in language or position.

Images, advertisements, and maps

Notice:

• composition;
• framing;
• scale;
• perspective;
• color;
• contrast;
• labels;
• symbols;
• boundaries;
• projection;
• what appears at the center or margins.

Video, film, and audio

Notice:

• camera angle;
• editing;
• sequence;
• pacing;
• music;
• silence;
• vocal delivery;
• lighting;
• performance;
• transitions between sound and image.

Data and research findings

Notice:

• variables and definitions;
• measurement choices;
• sample size and composition;
• comparison groups;
• patterns and outliers;
• correlation and causation;
• missing data;
• scale and visualization;
• limits and qualifications.

Platforms, websites, and interfaces

Notice:

• defaults;
• prompts;
• notifications;
• recommendation systems;
• button placement;
• labels;
• hierarchy;
• pathways;
• friction;
• accessibility;
• which actions are easy, difficult, visible, or hidden.

Designed spaces

Notice:

• entrances and exits;
• seating;
• lighting;
• barriers;
• signs;
• surveillance;
• pathways;
• accessibility;
• comfort;
• who appears expected, welcomed, monitored, or excluded.

Habits and routines

Notice:

• triggers;
• repeated sequence;
• environmental cues;
• rewards;
• interruptions;
• constraints;
• decisions that have become automatic;
• how individual behavior interacts with systems or spaces.

Across subjects, analysis asks how parts and relationships produce larger meanings, effects, or consequences.

A lens is a focused way of asking questions about a subject. It does not provide a predetermined answer.

Rhetorical lens

How do choices respond to audience, purpose, context, and genre?

Cultural lens

What values, identities, traditions, norms, or power relationships shape the subject?

Ideological lens

What worldview, assumptions, or beliefs about how the world works or should work guide decisions and actions?

Historical lens

How does a particular time, event, debate, or change affect meaning?

Design lens

How do structure, placement, defaults, pathways, and affordances influence use or attention?

Cause-and-effect lens

What factors contribute to an outcome, and what evidence supports the relationship?

Comparative lens

What meaningful similarity, difference, pattern, or contrast becomes visible when subjects are examined together?

Ethical lens

Who benefits, who carries risk, what responsibilities arise, and which values are being applied?

A lens should help you notice and test relationships. It should not force every subject into the same conclusion.

Practice 1: Observation, interpretation, significance

Choose a short passage, image, webpage, map, video clip, or physical space.

Record:

1. three specific observations;
2. one possible interpretation for each observation;
3. one larger significance that connects at least two observations.

Then identify which interpretation has the strongest evidence.

Practice 2: Move beyond summary

Choose one assigned source and write:

1. a two-sentence summary;
2. one sentence identifying a significant feature or pattern;
3. two sentences explaining how that feature works;
4. one sentence explaining why the interpretation matters.

Underline the point at which the writing moves from summary into analysis.

Practice 3: Strengthen “This shows”

Revise each sentence so it names a specific relationship and significance.

1. This quote shows that the character is lonely.
2. This statistic shows that transportation is a problem.
3. This image shows pathos.
4. This button shows that the website wants people to click.
5. This example shows that the policy is unfair.

Practice 4: Pattern hunt

In an assigned text or subject, identify:

• one repetition;
• one contrast;
• one shift;
• one omission;
• one assumption;
• one possible consequence.

Choose the two most closely related findings and draft an analytical claim.

Practice 5: Evidence-to-explanation ladder

Use evidence from a current assignment and draft:

1. claim;
2. context;
3. evidence;
4. observation;
5. interpretation;
6. significance;
7. link.

Then revise the passage so it reads as a coherent paragraph rather than a visible checklist.

Practice 6: Test an alternative interpretation

Write your current interpretation in one sentence.

Then write:

• a plausible alternative;
• the evidence supporting the alternative;
• the evidence supporting your interpretation;
• one qualification your original claim should include.

Practice 7: Analyze a multimodal subject

Choose a webpage, short video, infographic, advertisement, map, interface, or designed space.

Analyze at least two modes or features, such as:

• words and image;
• sound and pacing;
• color and placement;
• data and scale;
• pathway and barrier;
• prompt and default.

Explain how the features work together rather than discussing each in isolation.

Practice 8: Paragraph audit

Mark the following in one analytical paragraph:

• analytical claim;
• context;
• evidence;
• observation;
• interpretation;
• significance;
• connection to the thesis.

Any missing or underdeveloped element becomes a revision target.

Practice 9: Revise a thesis

Begin with this observation:

The tutoring webpage gives the appointment button greater visual prominence than other access information.

Draft:

1. a topic statement;
2. a descriptive statement;
3. an analytical thesis;
4. a revised analytical thesis that includes stakes or a meaningful tension.

Practice 10: Full analysis plan

Choose a subject and develop:

• analytical question;
• necessary context;
• working thesis;
• three patterns or relationships;
• evidence for each;
• an alternative interpretation;
• the larger significance;
• a tentative sequence of paragraphs.

Analysis develops interpretations from evidence. Argumentation asks you to present and support a claim within a larger conversation in which other people may hold different positions, use different evidence, or define the issue differently.

Before moving forward, choose one analytical finding and ask:

1. What claim follows from this analysis?
2. What evidence supports the claim?
3. What reasoning connects the evidence to the claim?
4. What assumption does the claim depend on?
5. What might another writer challenge or qualify?
6. Why does the issue matter to an audience beyond the assignment?

In Chapter 11: Argumentation: Joining the Academic Conversation, you will use analysis to build reasons, address alternative positions, and contribute your own claim to an ongoing discussion.

You are ready to continue when you can:

• distinguish summary, description, analysis, and evaluation;
• move from observation to interpretation and significance;
• use how, why, and so what questions to deepen a claim;
• identify a meaningful pattern, relationship, assumption, or consequence;
• explain exactly how evidence supports an interpretation;
• recognize and repair evidence dumping or summary-heavy paragraphs;
• develop an analytical thesis with meaningful stakes;
• consider an alternative interpretation and qualify a claim appropriately;
• apply analytical thinking to more than one medium or discipline;
• explain how analysis prepares you to make an argument.

Next: Chapter 11, Argumentation: Joining the Academic Conversation

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