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ENG 120 Week 8 Discussion: Turn in Analysis of a Written Text Essay
Unit 1: Analyzing a Written Text Essay Assignment
LESSON: All writing is purposeful and audience-driven. Whether you are writing an email to your manager at work, a letter to your child’s teacher, or an essay for class, a specific goal and a direct audience should impact the writing choices you make. As a writer, it is important to understand these choices and make decisions that will best impact your goal. As a reader, it is important to analyze how other writers make choices and how those decisions impact the effectiveness of their messages. Because the reader-writer connection is so intertwined, we will focus our efforts in this unit on critically reading a variety of essays in order to develop insight into and analyze the effectiveness of written texts. Our work in this unit will culminate in the second major essay, an analysis essay.
YOUR GOAL: Your analysis essay should be an examination of how a writer successfully communicates a message to readers. It should investigate, explain, and support how the writer of a chosen essay accomplishes an intended purpose. To do this, you should explain the meaning of a text, analyze its structure and features, and help readers understand how/why it is thought-provoking, engaging, or impactful. In other words, your goal is to study the impact a text has by analyzing the author’s writing strategies. You will have to use specific examples from the chosen essay to prove your points, making critical reading an integral part of this process. One important note to keep in mind is that analysis is not simply a summary. Summarizing parts of your text may be necessary to support your analysis, but summary alone is not analysis. Analysis breaks the text apart to better understand what it is doing and how/why it is doing it. Assume your readers have also read the text you are analyzing; thus, to bring new insights/information to your readers, you’ll have to go beyond just telling them what happens in the text.
THE PROCESS:
FIRST, you will choose one of the two assigned readings as the subject of your essay:
NEXT, engage with the readings, activities, and discussion forums assigned each week. All assignments are purposefully structured to build critical steps into the reading/writing process. Skills you will learn include:
ESSAY COMPONENTS (you can find a rubric here Download here):
ESSAY REQUIREMENTS:
Discussions play an integral role in monitoring your course participation throughout the term. You should check back to the weekly discussions multiple times throughout the week to engage in the discussion with your professor and peers. Participation is only counted during the week in which this discussion is assigned. Be sure to appropriately cite any sources you use to support your responses with standard APA citations. Answer the prompt question(s) thoroughly, using at least 150-200 words, and respond to as many of your peers as possible. Note that responses to 2 of your peers are required for full credit. Be sure to answer any additional questions asked by your professor in the discussion threads. Your initial post is due by Day 3 of the current week, and follow up posts to your peers are due on Day 7!