How to Analyze Essays: Basic Steps to Take

Girl is typing text in laptop.Do you have to analyze someone’s essay? It seems like this task seriously puzzles you. Before this moment, you had to write essays, your teacher analyzed them, and gave you marks.

Now, you have to act almost like the teacher and analyze an essay. It might be one of your peers’ works or a paper of some scholar, because an essay is a common form of expressing ideas on some problem.

Anyway, you need to learn how to analyze essays as soon as possible. We describe some basic steps you will have to take to analyze an essay successfully.

How to analyze essays: step 1

First, you have to read the essay quickly and get its main idea. Better get equipped with a pencil and underline some unknown words or terms that should be clarified. Then, you will look them up.

How to analyze essays: step 2

Now, read the essay once again slowly. This time, your major mission boils down to identifying the thesis statement of the essay. Do not forget that it should be placed in the introductory paragraph.

There are several questions you can ask yourself:

  • What is the author going to prove?
  • What is the unifying theme of the paper?

How to analyze essays: step 3

After you find and get the thesis statement, you may pass to the structure of the essay. Needless to say, you will have to analyze three major parts of the essay:

  • Introduction – it should have a thesis statement;
  • Body paragraphs – they should highlight the main points stated in the thesis, provide supporting facts, have necessary transitions;
  • Conclusions.

When you analyze essays, also consider such factors as whether the writer took the audience into account, whether he/she used the right vocabulary, etc.

If you have problems with writing summary essays or making titles for essays, next articles will be useful.

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