What Is An Analytical Essay?
An analytical essay is a piece of writing whose primary goal is to explain something gradually to improve understanding of a certain topic, and it is an in-depth analysis of an idea, process, or text.
An analytical essay can also analyze carefully and discuss a literary text to improve its comprehension.
It is one of the most typical college assignments by which you can develop your analytical argument and requires specific skills that not every student possesses. Writing a good analytical essay will help you in making your personal decisions and further your professional career.
As a student, you should develop your point of view on a certain topic and support it with evidence in the text.
Firstly, writing an analytical essay means understanding the outline and the accurate writing procedure.
In addition, analytical essays can be part of academic journals, newspapers, and magazines where writers analyze a film, work of art, history events, politics, economy, or philosophy to educate the citizens on different matters of politics or culture.
What Kind Of Language Do We Use When Writing An Analytical Essay?
When writing an analytical essay, you must break down the topic into parts and usually go beyond the surface analysis and look into the key arguments of the presented issue, why they exist and how you can make them clear to the reader.
Analytical essays do not summarize but usually focus on major themes in the work, explain how the authors support their arguments, the literary devices they use, and how the text was written, so you should delve into the interpretation, not the summarizing of the facts.
In addition, you should not use any persuasive language, emotional appeals, or personal anecdotes to persuade your users to change their point of view on a certain topic. You only need to clarify the topic by giving reasonable, logical, and strong examples and analyses for the topic to be better presented and understood.
What Are The Main Components Of An Analytical Essay?
Besides the two typical essay components like introduction and conclusion, an analytical essay will consist of:
- A thesis that expresses your crucial argument
- Analysis of the presented argument that backs it up and is closely related to it
- Few examples that also support the argument and give a more in-depth look at the presented issue
7 Steps Of Writing An Analytical Essay
If you want to write a good analytical narrative essay, it must offer a clear point of view and give opposing arguments about one main idea, and all this should be supported by primary and secondary sources. It usually contains 500 to 1000 words.
We offer you a basic guideline that you can choose to follow when writing an analytic essay and there are 7 basic steps:
1. Write the thesis statement
In the beginning, you should choose the main idea and the thesis statement that will show your reader what the essay is about and what you are going to analyze in the text.
The topic is usually given by teachers if you are a student, but you should choose the thesis statement.
If you write an essay about a work of fiction, you can argue why one specific part of the text is crucial and central, for example, the theme of vengeance in the epic poem of Beowulf.
If you write about scientific research or a new invention, you can analyze the scientific method that can be used to get proven results.
While writing the thesis statement, you can choose the brainstorming technique to discover more about the topic and consider it from different angles, looks for things that repeat, see how the author uses the logical appeals to support their argument, and see whether it is effective.
The thesis shouldn’t be too vague or too broad, but a specific one that makes a particular claim on which you can argue.
For example, it should probably analyze only the literary stylistic choices the author made to express his idea.
2. Write the introduction
The introduction of the essay is essential because it should provoke interest in the reader.
When you write the introduction, try not to summarize, but just simply state your thesis, usually in the last sentence of the paragraph and the essay structure.
Make a good hook with a global statement or maybe with a rhetorical question and state all the issues that you are going to argue about.
An example of a good analytical essay intro (the topic is The Relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ) would be:
“All religions are related despite their difference in beliefs. As society is changing, people are beginning to question the existence of these religions and we need to inspect further this question.
The doctrine that is practiced, is fundamental for the people that are religious. Religions’ different concepts create discrepancies, but the survival of these religions lies in these concepts. This essay will look into the historical background of these religions and will try to improve their understanding and find the cause of all these disagreements and why they disagree with each other.”
3. Write the outline
But, before writing the other part of the essay, you can write the essay outline to make your writing easier. The standard essays usually contain and this is the structure outline of an analytical essay:
- Introduction (hook – thesis – transition )
- 3 body paragraphs (3 main points with examples and explanation – transition)
- Conclusion ( restated thesis with summary and conclusion words)
Sometimes, the body paragraphs may vary depending on the topic. Still, all paragraphs should give background information, the topic sentence that gives the reader information about what the paragraph will be about, supportive evidence for the thesis, and depth analysis of the text related to the thesis with details and contrasting viewpoints.
The outline of your essay is very important, so you should keep an eye and be careful when making it.
4. Write the topic sentence for each paragraph
As stated above, each paragraph should contain a topic sentence that introduces it and makes it clear what the paragraph will be about. Be extra careful because they need to be related to the thesis and supportive enough. They should focus on the main idea, so if you write about literary choices the author had made while writing the work, you can use facts such as metaphors, alliteration, and allusion and write the topic sentence about them.
5. Find solid evidence to back up your argument
The paragraphs of the essay should contain solid textual evidence taken from primary and secondary sources. When you have found your main points and stated them in the topic sentences, you should find enough evidence to back them up.
Every strong essay should contain enough backup evidence to support the argument. So, you can use quotes from knowledgeable sources, passages, facts, statistics, opinions of some experts, etc…
6. Provide additional points of view
In some cases, you can write an additional paragraph, with another critical point of view. If you do not agree with it, you can use it to make your argument even stronger. You can prove that someone else argument is false by giving additional evidence and logical reasoning, which will strengthen your thesis.
7. Write the concluding paragraph
When you write the conclusion, it should restate the main arguments, and it should never give new information or evidence. It should make the main idea even more clear, and the reader should understand the purpose of your paper and the main points when reading it, even if they haven’t read the other parts of the paper.
You can also leave them with final words for consideration and further analysis. Then, in the end, do proofreading and search for any spelling or grammar mistakes.
Make sure the format is correct and read it once again loud to see if it sounds awkward and read it as if you were the teacher. You may ask yourself some questions about the structure, whether it explains the topic clearly, and you can ask someone else to read it and tell you whether it expresses the main idea behind it.
What Are The Good Topics For Writing An Analytical Essay?
The topic of the analytical essays is usually argumentative and arguable and not too broad, so you cannot fully explore it in just one essay.
Topics for analytical essays can range from stories from real life, and politics to something like a poem or a book and an analytical essay on climate change. There are different subjects to choose from and you should always think it over carefully and do some research when writing it.
7 Tips for Writing A Good Topic For An Analytical Essay
- You can always choose a topic that you already have some information about and know some facts
- The topic can be related to your field of study and something that interests you
- You should always understand the reasons why you write that essay and which is the main objective of your writing the essay
- Make sure you can find enough information about that topic
- Avoid complex topics that are difficult to write about
- Read a little bit about the topic before you decide you will write about it finally
- Be sure that you can use different angles to describe the topic
We offer you a few essay topics that you can use on different subjects to help you with the selection:
- Why do the cases of depression increase in the United States?
- Make an analysis of classical art in the historical context
- Why makes people introverted?
- Pros and cons of optimism and pessimism and which one is better and why
- How does mass media influence your brain?
- How can you make your career more successful?
- Why does cyberbullying appear and which are the main reasons behind it?
- The significance of organ donation in the world of medicine
- Analysis of the alcohol addiction among the young population
- Reasons behind the immigration crisis
- Is social disparity inevitable and is it possible to end it?
- Why should e-books replace the paper books and how are they safe for the environment
- Analyze the character of Romeo in the play Romeo and Juliette
- The advantages of taking a balanced diet
- The balance between the work and the personal life
- What are the main reasons behind the rapid climate change
- Is there a connection between the violent video games and the aggressive children
- How does smog affect human health?
- How to stand from other applicants when searching for a job
- Analyze the difference between the anarchy and democracy
An Example Of An Analytical Essay
We have already got you familiar with the definition of an analytical essay, tips on how to write it, and examples of good topics for writing this type of essay. However, knowing how daunting this task can be, and important in the life of students, here is an example of an analytic essay on a popular subject of our everyday living, the climate change entitled “Difficulties In Controlling Climate Change“.
Difficulties In Controlling Climate Change
Introduction
The last two centuries are known for their huge technological development that increased the demand for energy sources which was met by burning fuel, that in turn had a negative effect on the ecosystem. The sea level is increased, and polar caps began to melt, which posed a threat to all living organisms and especially to the areas that lay under water.
Paris Agreement
That is why many countries engaged and signed an agreement (Paris Agreement) whose aim is to decrease the global temperature by less than 2 °C and for every country to be aware of the temperature rise and the damage it can cause to the environment.
Some developed countries raised funds to help under-developed countries financially and implement new policies that will lower the greenhouse effect.
However, scientists believe the changes in the environment are so disastrous that we cannot keep the carbon emission under control and predict that the temperature will increase even by the 2100s, so the reality is completely different from the Agreement.
But, unfortunately, many countries do not agree to follow this Agreement legally and do not commit enough to the control of carbon emissions.
This refers to the United States and China, which, although they are one of the greatest emitters of carbon dioxide, haven’t made any fundamental changes until today regarding their industries and legal policies.
Political Differences and Climate Change
If we want to give an example, it would be that of Donald Trump, who questioned the existence of global warming and did not make any policies to protect us from its damage.
Furthermore, in India, there are many political parties that confront the development of environmental policies, although this country is one of the leaders in emissions of carbon dioxide.
So many countries haven’t done much regarding climate change and are not fully committed to following the Paris Agreement, and this negatively affects climate change.
Foreign policies
The United States, as one of the greatest contributors to climate change, second in the world, has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and this has a huge impact on the research activities and preventive measures to lower the effects of climate change.
Besides, Russia and Iran are other countries that haven’t contributed much to this issue; therefore, the European leaders should take responsibility and fight to gain this cause.
In addition, there are some coal plants that are constructed in some underdeveloped countries.
But, the question remains, what they can do, when countries that are superpowers like the United States have withdrawn from the Agreement and did not take into account the fact that the world needs to reach net zero in carbon emissions by 2050.
Conclusion
We can conclude that our ecosystem is at the point of getting destroyed due to climate change. That is why Paris Agreement developed a policy that can urge countries to take immediate action against this flaw.
Unfortunately, some countries like the United States, India, Iran, and Russia do not fully abide by this policy and should start to adhere as soon as possible and help other underdeveloped countries to lower the temperature by 2 °C to help in saving humanity.
