Learning How to Analyze an Article

At one point in your life as a writer, you may be asked to conduct a text analysis and come up
with an analysis of an article. All you need to know before carrying on in such as assignment
is the response outline for your essay. You have to understand the type of article under
analysis so that you can be able to come up with the preferred tone of your essay. You also
have to understand the rules and format of the essay so that you do not mess up with the
outline.

Choose one of the writing partners to get the best out of your article analysis:

What is an article analysis? (Simplified Definition)

Before you get to analyze an article or any other literature piece, it is good to understand what
is the meaning of analyzing. To analyze is the art of breaking down a literature piece and
addressing each point independently to the understanding of your readers. When you analyze
an essay, your main objective is to ensure that your audience gets the major points without
much struggle.  When you analyze an article, you are trying to demonstrate your critical
thinking ability. In analyzing, you have to make judgments of certain matters in the story and
come up with conclusions. When you write such an essay, you will be trying to convince the
reader that you have indeed read the article and you can critique it accordingly.

In analyzing an article, you are based on three main points as a writer:

 Summarize the main points in the piece – when you get to writing an article analysis, you
have to make a summary of the main points in the article so that the reader can be able to
understand what the article is all about in general. The summary will act as an overview of
the story outline, but it is not the main analysis, it just acts to guide the reader to
understand what the article is all about in brief.
 Proceed to the main argument and the evidence offered by the writer in the article – this is
where analysis begins because you are required to critique the article by analyzing the
evidence given by the author of the piece. You should also point out the flaws in the work
and support where it needs to be; it should not necessarily be a positive critique, you are
free to pinpoint even the negative part of the story. In other words, you should not rely on
one side but be truthful on what you are addressing to the satisfaction of anyone who would
read your essay.
 Reflect on the significance of the piece – most readers would want to see the importance of
your work. It is your role as a writer to emphasize the importance of the article so that the
reader can be contented with your writing. When your audience gets interested in your
work you will have achieved your aim because the main aim of writing is to convince the
reader, the more persuasive you are, the more your article outstands. Focus on motivating
your audience, and you will have scored.

Article analysis format (Article Format Solution!!)

Just like any other analysis paper, you will need to understand your audience to come up with
a tone that suits them. You have to ensure that you understand your audience. If you are a
student, the primary audience is your lecturer. Therefore, you have to be formal because you
are after marks. When you get outside class, you may analyze a news article where you need
to clarify to the public the deeper meaning of a certain phrase. In this case, you will need to
introduce an informal tone to be friendly to all the readers since the readers here are a
variety.  Understanding your audience will help you know how to encrypt your essay to their
satisfaction.

One of the steps before you get to write your essay is to read the article that you are to
analyze; you should read through it several times to get the points. You cannot be able to
analyze an article if you have not understood it well. When you read the article for the first
time, you should skim through it to get the main points and know the story outline. Skimming
usually helps you to get the main themes in the story. While skimming, you should
concentrate on the small subheadings in the story. Skimming is like going through the trailer
of a movie, you just get to know what the story is all about in brief but you will not
understand the real movie.

After skimming, you should come back and read while writing down points to facilitate
understanding. Concentrate on the main arguments in the story – ensure that you get the main
arguments of the author right. You should be able to know the objective of the author of the
piece. Different authors use different ways to pass their message; you should be able to
understand the style used to get the intention of the author. In an argument you have to look
for three major things:

 The evidence – identify the evidence that the author used in the article to support their
claim. While looking into the evidence, you should be able to gauge whether the writer
brings out factual evidence or it is personal judgments.
 The validity of the argument – a writer might use many pieces of evidence to support their
claims but you need to identify the sources they use and determine whether they are
credible or not. Credible sources are like scholarly articles and books, and some of the
sources are not worth relying on for research.
 How convictive are the arguments? You should be able to judge the persuasion of the author
to the audience. An article is usually informative and therefore has to be persuasive to the
readers to be considered worthy. If it does not achieve this, you should be able to critique
that and illustrate the same.

Article analysis example

There are different types of articles that you may be asked to critique as a writer. Some of the
common examples include journal article, research article and news article. Each type has its
way of analysis, which you should be aware of as a writer. It is good to come up with
questions before you get to your essay writing because the question acts as a guide on what
you are going to cover in your analysis. For a research article analysis, you should be able to
address the following questions:

 What is the objective of the research? You should be able to explain to your readers
the thesis of the paper.
 Clarify the method used in the collection of information – you should be able to
identify the ways of acquiring information.
 Give the samples used – in research, there have to be samples taken to help in making
conclusions, be sure to state the samples to persuade your readers on your objective.
 What were the findings? You should be able to state the findings of the research in
your essay so that the reader can understand you.
For a news article, you will only need to clarify the major points and state whether the author
is right or wrong depending on the evidence used to support it. The audience for the news
article is usually informal because there is no specific group of people you are aiming to
address, but it should be friendly to all classes of readers.

Read also: What does a research paper consist of and how to write it?

What you did not know about article analysis template

You should be conversant with the procedures of conducting your analysis as a writer. To
come up with great content for your work, you should follow the following outline:

 Read through the piece quickly to get an overview.

After going through all those steps, you will have succeeded in coming up with a good
critique for an article.

How to write a conclusion for an article analysis

The conclusion of an essay is usually critical because it is the last point that your reader can
remember about your article. You should be able to write an eye-catching conclusion so that
you can be able to score highly on your paper. One format that you can use in coming up with
your conclusion is writing a summary of the major body points. The examiner will grade you
depending on what they can remember well about your paper, and your conclusion is usually
the game changer. In your conclusion, you should wrap up everything in the body and give
lessons and recommendations on what needs to be done.

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