To compose a superior analysis essay, you must intelligently choose your components. When composing a piece of creative writing, you can choose your components creatively. Sometimes

those same creative choices can help composing analytical essays, so the purpose of this unit is to understand and develop the use of choices you can make in your own texts.

This is an analysis essay because you will be discussing two questions:
-WHY did the author choose this textual strategy?
-HOW did the author’s choice contribute (or not contribute) to the thesis/larger idea?
For this assignment, choose 1 of the 3 appropriate texts (Millet, Forche, or Turner) and analyze the textual strategies used by that author and how they contributed to the overall meaning.

Things to Consider:
-Summary of the text will be necessary, but more space should be devoted to a necessary discussion of language, textual strategies, and effectiveness. Your own thinking MUST appear in the

form of a thesis statement and analysis.
-You do not have to appreciate a particular story or textual strategy to be able to talk about it; often what you dislike, disagree with, or don’t understand (cognitive dissonance) can help you

generate discussion.
-This essay must demonstrate P.I.E. organization as discussed in Section 3.5 of A Student’s Guide to First-Year Writing
-your final draft must be at least 5 full pages in length of typed, double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman font with consistent margins no bigger than 1”.
Guides to Invention
-In class we have and will discuss the ideas in the texts. A larger question you can ask is, “How are the strategies in this text different than an essay or academic writing?”
-These things can help you: prewriting, the textbooks (pp. 37-41 in SG is very helpful), and class discussions to test hypotheses. Develop body paragraphs from quotations first. Then, once you

have formulated an idea about your thesis and academic analysis, build first and last paragraphs.
-Is there a particular textual strategy that you understand, you’ve seen before, or you think would be useful to help your analysis? You can use them if you wish, but make sure YOU FULLY

UNDERSTAND THAT TEXTUAL STRATEGY before you use it!
Requirements
Besides the aforementioned requirements, your essay will be judged on its ability to:
-provide a clear thesis and textual evidence to support it
-show a clear grasp of concepts such as analysis, textual strategies, and genre
-make use of correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, and formatting