Music 9: Article Analysis Prompt

Requirements: Your article analysis should illustrate your
ability to critically think and analyze about a text. At a minimum, your
article analysis should be 1000-1500 words, not including your Works Cited
page.

Summary

§  Start with a summary of the article – use your annotations from the
article to help you summarize.

§  Your summary should be one paragraph long and should be the first
paragraph of your analysis.

§  In your summary, be sure to:

o   Mention the title of the
text, the name of the author, and the author’s thesis statement or the central
point;

o   Maintain a neutral tone and
be objective;

o   Use the 3rd person point of
view and the present tense (avoid first person);

o   Focus on the article, and
don’t bring in any of your personal experience;

o   Don’t state the authors
ideas as your own;

o   Put all or most of this
summary in your own words. If you borrow a phrase or sentence from the text,
place it in quotation marks and properly cite it using in-text citations;

o   Limit your summary to the
article’s key points. Don’t get bogged down with details;

o   Be concise.

Analysis

§  After you complete your
summary paragraph, add one to three paragraphs of analysis of the article.

§  Your paragraph(s) should
have clear topic sentences and show critical thinking of the article.

§  Consider the following
questions when writing your analysis paragraph(s). Although you do not need to
address all of these questions, successful paper tend to address most of the
questions with multiple sentences devoted to each answer.

§  Who is the audience (who is
the author writing to)? How successful was the author in appealing to this
audience?

§  What type of evidence does
the author use to support the thesis? How persuasive is the evidence? How do
you know?

§  How does the author relate
key points to one another? Did the author structure his/her argument well?

§  What strategies does the
author use to generate interest in the argument and to persuade readers of its
merit?

§  Does the author anticipate
objections and counter-opposing views? Did the author fairly evaluate and
address the counterarguments? Could the author have addressed more
counterarguments?

§  Does the author have any
biases? How do you know?

§  How credible is the author?
How do you know?

§  Remember, good analysis
always points back to the text. If you think the author is using persuasive
evidence, point out a specific place in the text where the evidence is
persuasive.

§  Don’t forget to include MLA
Citations, both on-text and on a Works Cited page.