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Learning How To Analyze Essays Written By Others
It is easier to analyze essays written by others then the ones written by yourself, because you´re not so judgemental. The issue will lie in the topic. Before you can start you need to ensure that you familiarize yourself with the facts associated with the topic. After this has been completed you will have the mind-set to have a fair thinking and reason when reading the essay.
Once you are able to analyse and critique essays you will improve your objective thinking. It will improve your thinking abilities when you hear things on the news, from others, advertising and even hearsay. Fundamentally, it will improve your writing skills. Reading others mistakes makes it easier to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes when you write. These can include grammatical errors, spelling, punctuation and even the flow of essays. Do they all hang together? Does it make sense? If someone knew nothing about the topic, would they learn something from reading it or will they just have more questions and be confused about the topic at hand.
Writing analytical essays teaches methodical thinking. I will write some key steps to being able to complete analytical essays:
- Distinguish between fact and opinion. A fact comes from a reliable source; it is an objective statement opposed to an opinion which is a subjective statement. Solid opinions are based on facts and so critical essays should voice solid opinions.
- Verify the facts and are they trustworthy. If a number is too small or big then research it to find the sources of this statement.
- Only rely on trustworthy sources for the facts. If a diet company, selling products is making statements ‘quoting’ their clients, then it is not an objective source of information. Facts need to be able to be independently verifiable to be reliable.
- Mining data to prove the point of the essay. So, the writer has only used data to reach the conclusion in their argumentative statement. They have not used another source of data to counteract their conclusion.
- Learn the difference between a premise and a fallacy. Premises are true statements that support an argument´s conclusion, whereas logical fallacies are errors in thinking.
The last and most important thing is to think about your own motives, but then keep fairness in mind. We are human therefore we can take our opinion about topics and voice how we think the conclusion should be as opposed to the academic essay´s final conclusion.