Evaluate the efficacy of analysis essays in order to develop awareness of personal ability in relation to academic standards.

Introduction/Rationale:

This assignment is designed to encourage students to blend skills from the prior assignments, the summary and response. To complete this assignment successfully, students need to be able to accurately describe their source material (which involves summary skills) and be able to explain how the component parts of the source influenced their response to it. Ideally, they will also be able to see that examining the source from a different perspective will yield different responses.

Assignment Prompt:

You will be writing an in-depth analysis paper. An analysis paper asks you to do more than either a summary or a response. For this paper, additional meaning should be added to the conversation. This is different from your response paper. In that paper, you wrote about your reaction to what you had read. An analysis paper, works to break down a text or argument into its component parts, and then to discuss or describe those parts using a particular perspective, theory, method, or lens. You have two options as ways to complete this paper.

Option 1:

For this paper, you may analyze an image of your choosing. You may find movie posters or book covers to very fruitful sources. As a visual analysis, you will discuss the formal elements of the image, but you will do that in order to support a thesis you are stating about the image. You can also include genre analysis and rhetorical analysis. This is not a comparison / contrast paper, but if a second image will help you to prove your thesis, you may include it.

Option 2:

For this paper, you will analyze a commercial of your choosing. The commercial should be one that you find interesting, whether or not you like whatever it is advertising. As with the visual analysis option, you can incorporate genre, visual, and rhetorical analysis into this paper.

The standard formatting rules in the syllabus apply to this paper.

After successfully completing this project, students should be able to:

Read

Explain college-level material using summary and paraphrasing strategies
Analyze college-level material to identify evidence that supports broader claims
Write

Take critical notes on objects of analysis
Compose multiple drafts of an analysis essay
Revise, proofread, and edit analytic essay

Reflect

Describe specific examples of the reading and writing processes used to compose the analysis essay

Evaluate reading and writing choices in order to determine potential challenges as well as changes in knowledge and skills

Evaluate the efficacy of analysis essays in order to develop awareness of personal ability in relation to academic standards

Use Technology

Compose, revise, and provide feedback on drafts using Microsoft Word
Use Canvas to submit assignments and access course materials
Incorporate common software platforms and technological tools into reading and writing processes (e.g. annotate texts, review and comment on drafts, revise drafts, collaborative writing, etc.)

Minimum Requirements:

Draft Requirements:

1,000 words of text, not including the Works Cited page
MLA formatting of your source, including a Works Cited page
At least 300 words of Reflection/self-assessment (after your Works Cited page)
Final Requirements:

1,000-1,500 words, not including the Works Cited page
MLA formatting of your source, including a Works Cited page

For Option 2

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