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ENGL 1201 – Analytical Essay Assignment (20%)
Due: June 25, before midnight
Where: D2L Dropbox
Find a source that will form the centre of your analysis in the Final Research Essay. You can
search the Library website (https://bowvalleycollege.ca/student-resources/rgo-library-learning-
commons) or Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com) for this source, and compose an
analysis of no more than TWO double-spaced pages (i.e., no more than 600 words).
This text can be non-fiction (i.e., an essay, an article, a newspaper article, an analysis) or fiction
(a short story, a novel, a comic). The source must be textual; if you want to write on a film or a
TV series, go ahead—but it will be tougher. The source you choose will also decide the main
topic your essay will treat, so think carefully. You can choose to analyse a theme we’re
discussing in class, but you cannot write about one of our assigned essays.
Your goal is to answer the question: Why this specific text? What makes it a good choice for
your research paper? Make an argument about why you chose this text, and why now.
Discuss 4 of the following in your paper:
1. Locate the central thesis, theme, or research question your source presents.
2. Paraphrase this argument and TWO pieces of evidence the author uses to support their
claims—or, in the case of fiction, two short examples from elsewhere in the narrative that
reinforce this theme as central to the text.
3. For non-fiction: Assess the strength of this evidence as it pertains to the author’s major
argument (i.e., how does this argument move from one paragraph to another? How does
the essay address different topics and themes? What appeals does it use?)
For fiction: What signals does the narrative present that suggest to you the centrality of
this theme? Find examples and argue for how or why this theme is central in the text.
4. Look up several difficult words, parse one or two sentences that do not immediately make
sense to you, or try to work through a difficult argument so that your reader can
understand it better. This analysis should be related to your identification of the central
theme or argument, and not simply added on later.
5. Locate at least two appeals and describe how they work to convince you of the writer’s
argument. Why this writer? Why this topic? How does your writer convince you of the
merits of his or her claims?
Attempt to integrate these responses into a continuous argument, rather than submitting a
series of separate answers. Choose one question whose answer will be your thesis; the rest will
serve as context or as support for this thesis. Provide a reading of the text that suggests how and
why the writer has constructed their argument in the way they have. Note some interesting
features of the text and offer your own argument about what these decisions accomplish for
your own reading experience.
**Please also submit a draft of this essay alongside your final submission. Show me
evidence that you have written and revised your paper according to the strategies we’ve
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discussed in class. You’ll probably go over the strict word limit in your first draft. Try to be
concise, and think about how to organize these responses into paragraphs.
**Use APA style in your paper, which means a cover page, correct formatting throughout
the body of your paper, and a References page.
This assignment will assess:
• your reading comprehension;
• your ability to summarize part of a text;
• your ability to move from summary to analysis by identifying a question you have about
a text and answering it yourself;
• your understanding of how and why texts create specific effects (as per the appeals);
• your understanding of APA format and research practices.
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