STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAY: Analysis of Introductions

This exercise is a trial only. Doing the suggested analysis below will help ensure that you will succeed in your assignment to write an analysis of another writer's introduction to an argumentative paper. Doing the analysis below is NOT required. What is required is for you to find an essay in a magazine or newspaper and analyze that, based upon the technique used to analyze Wendy's below.

Look at the student essay titled "Butt Out" written by Wendy Gambill.

IDENTIFY which type of introduction the author uses.

COMMENT upon why you think this introduction is either good or bad for this particular article.

Your comments should be clear enough so that a reader could understand your complete meaning without having to read Gambill's paragraph.

You need to quote what is necessary to get your meaning across.

Your comments should concern themselves with the how and the why of her introduction.

Your opinions about the pros and cons of smoking should not enter into your analysis. If you want to express your opinions, that is fine; your opinions, however, are not an analysis. Your analysis is a look at structure, how something is put together and your judgment about how that something is put together is independent of your opinion about the content. You should be able to closely and carefully analyze writing that expresses ideas you disagree with just as easily as you analyze writing that expresses ideas that you agree with. Analysis is a process that demands a good deal of emotional removal from what you are analyzing.

To complete your Writing Exercise, use an article in a newspaper or popular magazine but follow this example.

The following opening paragraph is from a student's persuasion paper. Read it and and read how another student has written a detailed analysis (that accounts for the function of each sentence) that explains what is effective (and perhaps what is not) about each language choice made by the author. Please note: this is not a perfect introduction. There are problems with it that we will discuss; however, this introduction does do some things very well. And we need to understand just what those are just as we need to understand what are the things it does not do well.

Butt Out

      In the past few years, a battle between smokers and non-smokers has come to a boil. Even though non-smokers have been fairly quiet until now, they have always known that smoking was just as harmful to them as to the smoker. As early as 1604, King James I, repulsed by pipe smoking Londoners, blasted smoking as "a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs" (Hamilton 41). Today, unlike King James I, non-smokers have proof to back their argument. Smoking should be banned in public places because of the health dangers and the expense to innocent people.

— Wendy Gambill, English 102

Before you review the procedures, take a look at what another student has done with his analysis of Wendy's introduction.

Now read this student's introduction. It's on the same topic, but notice the totally different approach.

Puffed and Cuffed

By Cindy Chafins

            Smoking cigarettes should be a punishable crime!  I don’t believe there is a smoker alive who wouldn’t agree.  You know as well as I do, that we should be locked up for the smell alone. [1]It is as addictive as heroin, and as lethal as a loaded pistol.  [2]Smoking corrupts our lungs, and the lungs of everyone around us.  [3]It creates a desire that we keep with us for life, even if we have quit.   We are so addicted that our minds are twisted into believing that we must have the gray, throat choking, heart destroying, energy zapping, birth defecting, early aging, cloud of smoke pulled into our lungs so that twenty years later we can drown in our own nicotine coated mucus.

My intended audience would be nearly everyone.  While some smokers might be upset with such an outrageous idea, they do know that I am telling the truth and would agree. Non-smokers would simply have a ball with this one.  I can hear all their “yeses” and “that’s rights” before anyone even reads it.  Hopefully, it would reach children, especially teens, and cause second thoughts or doubts into their curious minds

[Note: I added the square brackets [  ] to show her supporting reasons to her thesis.

PROCEDURE for your analysis; first find an article in a newspaper or magazine:

First: identify the introduction and carefully read it at least twice.

Second: write down some observations that you have about how this introduction fits with the model you have about how introductions work.

Third: look at particular words, including the title, and see if there are any that should be changed for reasons of increased clarity. Comment on any good word choices.

Fourth: Write a short analysis (perhaps a 100 - 200 words) of the introduction only.

Before you continue, read this student example.

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