unit3txt.htm

Unit 3: The Analytical Paragraph

(Steps 3,4,5,6,7)

A Sample Work Sheet for the Analytical Paragraph Exercise

(Instructions: Your worksheet will contain all the information below from your article.)

Key Concepts from Paragraphs:

1. drought in South
2. government response
3. outside help
4. extent of damage
5. national impact
6. crossover effect
7. prospects for improvement

Subject category:

These three ideas are about the continuing drought .

Functional category:

These three ideas are effects.

Thesis Sentence:

Three effects of the continuing Southeastern drought are (1) an outpouring of outside help, (2) a pledge of government support, and (3) a prospect of crossover problems in farm-related industries.

Topic Sentences:

(1) One of the effects of the continuing drought thoughout the Southeast has been an outpouring of crop assistance by U.S. farmers.

(2) A second effect of the Southeastern drought has been a renewed pledge of federal support.

(3) A third effect of the lingering drought will be major financial setbacks for farm-related businesses and industries.

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(Steps 8,9,10,11)

A Sample Analytical Paragraph for the Analytical Paragraph Unit

Analysis of Text of Paragraph Paragraph Elements

Topic Sentence

Lead-in
Sentence

Block Quotation

Paraphrase

Interpretation

One effect of the Southeastern drought has been a renewed pledge of support by federal officials in Washington. In his August 4, 1986, Time article, "Shedding Sweat, Tears and Dollars," Stephen Koepp reviews the federal government's reaction to the lingering drought.

Back in Washington . . . Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng announced [a Reagan reviewed] aid package that somewhat under whelmed Southern farmers. Lyng said the Department of Agriculture would relax some of its price-support rules, thus allowing farmers to make emergency use of land and crops that they had agreed to set aside, and he promised that the Farmers Home Administration would offer low-interest loans in some cases.

Koepp notes the Southern farmers' reluctance, however, to assume further indebtedness. Farmers are looking for grants, not loans. Hay from their northern neighbors was apparently better received than proclamations from Washington, D.C. Farmers, in the South and elsewhere, have not been any too enamored with Reagan farm policies and federal "support."

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Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the use of another person's work and research without proper acknowledgment; in short, it is intellectual "theft." In order to avoid plagiarism, it is essential to document each reference or use of another person's work--even if that work may be the use of only a single distinctive word.

Below is a plagiarized use of information from the article cited above and used in the third part of the paragraph:

Southern farmers have been uninterested in assuming further indebtedness. Farmers want grants, not loans. Farmers haven't been very receptive to Reagan's farm policies.

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An Evaluation of Unit 3: The Analytical Paragraph

Please evaluate the unit on the analytical paragraph as a means for (1) assisting your instruction of other units in this course and (2) providing information that will help your instructor to improve materials and teaching of those materials in later semesters.

Please place an appropriate number beside each statement based upon the following criteria:

5 - strongly agree 4 - agree 3 - not sure 2 - disagree 1 - strongly disagree [blank] - no opinion/not applicable

_____ 1. The objectives for your learning in this unit are clear.
_____ 2. During this unit, you have been able to create, draft, revise, and edit appropriately analytical paragraphs.
_____ 3. You have written successfully for an audience other than your instructor.
_____ 4. You have written successfully for a variety of purposes.
_____ 5. You have been able to adapt your language, sentence structure, and organization to fit the audience, purpose, and topic of the writing task.
_____ 6. In the written assignment, you have been able to focus on a central idea (thesis) that controlled and unified the three paragraph units.
_____ 7. You have been able to support the development of your paragraphs with details that made them clearer.
_____ 8. In the written assignment, you have been able to identify the main ideas and supporting details in a reading selection from professional writing (the news magazine).
_____ 9. In the magazine article and examples, you have been able to analyze how professional writers achieve their purposes.
_____ 10. You have been able to produce writing based upon your synthesis of written materials with your own knowledge and opinions.
_____ 11. You have been able to locate and evaluate sources for writing tasks.
_____ 12. You have been able to demonstrate preliminary research skills: summarize, paraphrase, synthesize, and document information.
_____ 13. You are better able to analyze, question, and document information.
_____ 14. You now understand more fully the relationship oral and written communication.
_____ 15. Through written exercises in this unit, you have developed more confidence as a writer. _____ 16. The instruction for each assignment was clear.
_____ 17. Classroom instruction was clear and thorough.
_____ 18. Your instructor cares about your individual writing.
_____ 19. You have learned specific writing techniques that you will feel comfortable using in other courses.
_____ 20. Comments on papers returned have helped you to improve as a writer.
_____ 21. Revision of some assignment(s) have helped you to improve as a writer.
_____ 22. Conversation between you and your instructor has been helpful in clarifying problems in your writing.
_____ 23. You have felt free to ask your instructor for assistance.
_____ 24. Your instructor makes you want to improve as a writer.
_____ 25. Audio-visual aids that your instructor used in this unit helped to clarify writing principles. _____ 26. The Learning Skills Center staff has provided helpful assistance in clarifying assignments and problems in your writing.
_____ 27. You better understand the value of writing in your life as a way to learn, record, communicate, and understand.

Please use the space below to respond to the following questions:

(1) What has been the strongest feature of this unit?

(2) What has been the weakest feature of this unit?

(3) What would you suggest as an improvement for this unit?

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The Plan of the Analytical Paragraph

The analytical paragraph takes its name from the process of critical thining employed in its development--analysis. Analysis is the thinking pattern that identifies the distinctive parts of a subject.

The analytical paragraph makes use of information and comments drawn from sources other than the author's personal experience. These include such printed sources as newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, reference works, and non-printed sources such as recordings, video programs, speeches, and interviews. A reader examines quotations and--through analysis--selects statements or comments relevant to his or her purpose for a written or oral communication.

Selected quotations are incorporated and developed in an explanatory paragraph according to the following format:

a topic sentence that announces
the main idea of the paragraph

a lead-in sentence that announces
the author, the source, and the main idea
of the quotation that follows

a quotation (or its paraphrase) that
states only one major concept

the explanation, clarification, application,
demonstration, or evaluation
of the quotation

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An Example of an Analytical Paragraph Using a Personal Quotation

Many students in their senior year in high school have no plans to go to college. One reason that they give is their need for work and money. Mr. Robert Prior, principal of North Lake High School, told the P.T.A. that

a large number of our students in the DISD must find work in the community to help pay their expenses and, in some cases, even the bills at home. Many students, in fact, have both full-time and part-time jobs during their senior year which will continue after their graduation. College doesn't seem very important to students who have money in their pockets and wheels on the road.

After twelve years in school, a lot of students are just happy to be free from school, he added. A good job, a car, and friends on the weekend look like the best of all possible worlds to most students.

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A Model Analytical Paragraph Based on a Reading in the Humanities

By the 5th and 6th centuries, A.D., the influence of Christianity and the powerful Roman Catholic Church could be seen quite dramatically in the subject matter of art. Painting, sculpture, and literature from this period reveal a shift from the celebration of our physical world to the need to illustrate religious doctrines of the Holy Church. Instead of providing pleasures--as in the Greek and Roman precursors--works of art now had to teach and evangelize. William Fleming, in his book ARTS & IDEAS, explains this shift in artistic subject matter:

The denial of the flesh and the conviction that only the soul can be beautiful doomed classical bodiliness and exalted bodilessness. Instead of capturing and clothing the godlike image with flesh and blood, the new concern was with releasing the spirit from the bondage of the flesh.

It is easy to trace such a shift to the myth system of the Church itself. Doctrines held that since the material world is corruptible--that is, it is always in constant change and that it dies--the most important task of living is concentration on salvation and eternal life after this life in the flesh. Art, therefore, should inspire viewers to a sense of godliness and prompt a rejection of the physical world that is essentially evil.

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A Model Analytical Paragraph Using Short Quotations

It is, perhaps, to be expected to find in the writings of latter-day Puritans, two and three generations removed from the original settlers in New England, an erosion of some of the strong Calvinist religious principles that so preocuppied the Separatist founders at Plymouth in the 1620s. The private diary of Samuel Sewall, a magistrate in Massachusetts Bay Colony in the late seventeenth century, illustrates well this decline in attention to religious principles. "My bowels yearn toward Mrs. Denison," he once observed in a 1719 entry, "but I think God directs me in his Providence to desist." In a time of failure, it seems, Sewall is quick to catch the hand of God at work. But in far more passages, the assistance of God is not acknowledged when, in the heat of various passionate exercises, he ascribes credit to himself alone for his successes. A year later, in 1720, while pursuing the affections of Mrs. Winthrop, Sewall is blocked by the clumsy affront of his lady's glove, worn to obstruct his advances. He noted, "Ask'd her to acquit me of rudeness if I drew off her glove. Enquiring the reason, I told her twas great odds between handling a dead Goat, and a living lady. Got it off." The triumph of wit was Sewell's, not the Lord's. Or at least the absence of divine attribution suggests as much. Such absence suggests the erosion of intense religious concerns in the new century.

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A Model Analytical Paragraph on a Literary Topic

A third subject in his cosmic vision which Mark Twain assaulted was the nineteenth-century concept of special providence, the belief in supernatural intervention into the affairs of men by a Christian god "on call." Mark Twain once recorded in his notebook:

"Special Providence!" How that phrase nauseates me with its implied importance of man and triviality of god. In my opinion all these myriads and myriads of globes are nothing more than the animalcule that disease, infest, and pollute the arteries of god. And god does not know we are there, and he wouldn't care if he did.

This notation complements many other passages in his private and published works which establish his belief in a supreme being that is remote and isolated both from the affairs of men and from personal concern for the individual. The most important statements in the late published writings include his "Statements of the Eighties" and "In My Bitterness," remarks which he wrote just after the death of his oldest daughter Susy.

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(Step 11)

Examples Illustrating the Development of the
Third Part of Analytical Paragraphs
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Abstracting Key Concepts
Paraphrase
Expanding the Content of the Support Material
Explanation of Key Words in the Support Material
Analysis of Support Material
A Fusion or Synthesis of Authorities Including Support Material and New Support Materials
Interpretation of Support Material
Contrast of Key Concepts in the Support Material
A Debate of Support Materials
An Evaluation of Support Materials

ABSTRACTING OF (REPEATING) KEY CONCEPTS IN SUPPORT MATERIAL FOR EMPHASIS: mentioning words in non-explanatory sentences.