What is it?
You may be given an assignment sheet that asks for analysis of a text, a work of art, a space, or a discussion. Analysis moves past summarizing and offers a new way to understand something.
Analysis is an explanation for and interpretation of a piece of evidence that supports your argument. A piece of evidence may be a quote, a fact or a reference to a reading. It tells the reader what that piece of evidence means and why it’s important to your argument.
Your analysis shows your own thoughts on the evidence and connects the evidence to your thesis.
Frameworks
If you need a structured approach to developing your analysis, consider using one of these frameworks:
- The quote sandwich: Context, evidence, analysis
- The ACE method: answer, cite, explain
- The SPICE chart: Social, political, interaction, culture, and economics
- PIE: point (topic sentence), illustration (evidence), explanation (analysis)
Discovering connections between the sources helps you better analyze and understand the conversations surrounding your topic.
Strategies
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Rephrase your thesis as a question
Then, answer the question using your analysis. This will help keep your analysis focused and prevent you from introducing new or unrelated ideas. -
Color code and highlight
Pick a color for your analysis and read through your paper, highlighting every sentence that you think is analysis. This will help you get an idea of how much analysis is in your paper and decide if you need more or less of it. Also consider color coding and highlighting sentences that show the different parts of the quote sandwich and connect to your thesis. This will help you visualize how all these different elements fit together.
Questions to ask yourself
Feeling stuck? Try asking yourself questions to answer through your analysis! Some questions to consider:
- Why did I select this evidence?
- What is the significance of this evidence?
- Why does it matter?
- Why/how does this evidence support my argument?
- Does this evidence contradict my argument?
- Does it both support and contradict my argument? If so, what does that mean?
- What is the most important idea here?
- What do I want the audience to take away from reading this?
- How does this evidence evolve or change my argument?
- How does this evidence fit into a broader context or story? Think about cause and effect. What is the impact?
- What impact does this evidence have on history, the story, modern day, the real world, or me?
- How does this evidence affect general understanding of the topic or my argument?
In short, consider significance, impact and context!