1. Ask your Professors
2. Meet with classmates
3. Plan a schedule

Textual Analysis

Writing a textual analysis is not writing how you feel about a text’s topic, and it’s not writing whether you agree with the argument presented in the text. In fact, you can write a textual analysis about a text that deals with a topic you know little about or disagree with entirely.

When you write a textual analysis, you are writing to tell readers whether or not a text’s author effectively presents an argument. You will decide how effectively an author presents his or her argument by examining the techniques the author uses, explaining which ones work (or not) and why. To do this, you must first think about how these techniques affect the author’s intended audience and how they help to achieve the author’s intended purpose. Your analysis will be an explanation of how the author reaches that audience and achieves that purpose (or not).

In short, analysis involves thinking critically about how a text works (or doesn’t) and why, and then communicating that clearly.

Useful Questions to Ask Yourself

• Is everything in this text clear to me (including words, expressions, references)?
• What is the author’s purpose/audience for this text? How do I know that?
• What techniques does the author use to get his/her point across? For example, does the author quote or refer to credible sources, appeal to the audience’s emotions, organize the argument in a particular way, include graphics?
• Do I have a clearly stated thesis? Do I provide sufficient evidence for my claims?
• Are my readers likely to be familiar with the text I’m analyzing?
• What do I know or how do I feel about this topic/author? How will that influence my analysis?