Literary Analysis How To

When I became an English teacher, I don’t think I realized how much of my time would be spent on teaching how to “do” literary analysis. For me, it was something I just did–not necessarily because I was super talented, but because I wasn’t afraid to read something, have an idea about it, and then share that idea. By the time students reach high school, the gap between the students who read–ideate–write and those who don’t has widened significantly. How’s a teacher to stretch herself across that gap?

Literature Analysis Definition

At its core, I teach students to write a literary analysis paragraph. If they can build that, they can build an essay. The literature analysis definition I teach is really that it’s an argument. There are four main parts.

The Claim

This can be in response to a question (this often helps spark students’ thinking, working like a research question that guides inquiry). Even if it isn’t in response to a question, it is a statement about the text that requires reasoning and evidence to prove its validity. If you can say it without any evidence or reasoning, it is not a very strong claim (if it is a claim at all).

The Evidence

This is a direct quote or paraphrase from the text that supports the claim. Necessity applies here as it does with the claim. If the evidence can be stated and understood without any reasoning/explanation to connect it back to the claim, it’s not super compelling evidence.

The Reasoning

This can be part of the same sentence as the evidence or after it, but it ties the evidence back to the claim. It connects the dots for readers. The cycle of evidence and reasoning is repeated usually for several sentences because a claim needing only one piece of evidence and reasoning also isn’t very compelling.

The Fermata

This is the last sentence of the paragraph. The fermata is a term that comes from music, but I first heard it applied to writing in a book called The Magic Words by Cheryl Klein. This is a book about writing YA by a YA editor, which I applied to my own novel writing, but I also have used it to teach fiction, as well as fermatas in any writing. Klein describes it as holding an idea that readers can consider–an idea that grounds them in the message but also gives them food for thought. It’s not leaving things ambiguous to trick the reader, but allowing them a moment to dwell with their own thinking in the world built by the writer (which could be the world of the argument they are making). This metaphor has worked again and again with my students.

Literary Analysis Purpose

If you don’t have the time to launch into a full non-literary analysis unit, you can also recreate that idea in one lesson. Students can share about a topic of choice and their analyses of said topic without doing any formal writing. You can draw their attention to how they use claims, evidence, and reasoning to explain their analyses.

A debate about a passionate topic can be another way to introduce claim, evidence, and reasoning, and why they matter. If you want to do a low-stakes debate form, check out resources from Dave Stuart, Jr.

Analytical Paragraph Writing Tips for Every Student

Because this is a mainstay of language arts classes, there is plenty of time to teach, reteach, and extend students’ understanding and execution of the writing. Here are my top tips:

Be prepared to make your own analytical paragraph writing example.

This is important because you are able to explain the process from the inside. You will also be a model of how to deal with the more difficult parts of the process. If you come with a premade example, students may believe there must be something wrong with them if they struggle. If you come with no example, the students may feel too overwhelmed to manage all the parts.

Starting with poetry can really help this process. It allows you to model analytical paragraph writing with a short text. I had students copy my example in their notes (they could type or handwrite–example is provided for those that need it). This hand-over-hand support lets them feel and see the sentence structure.

Give them analytical paragraph words to use.

As you may know, I am obsessed with domain language, and analytical writing has its own set of words to use. I start the year with a very repetitive set of language. The students who need it hold onto it, and the students who already have it use their own language. Their work can become exemplars. When students are ready to write with more sentence variety, you can pull similar language from the texts of advanced students.

This also becomes a fabulous time to teach between- and within-paragraph transitions. I am especially a fan of within-paragraph transitions (because it easily transfers to longer essays) and students get less exposure to considering the relationship between their ideas. They include three pieces of evidence because we said three, disregarding how said pieces work together (or potentially contradict each other).

Analysis Writing Techniques to Teach

There are so many analysis writing techniques to unpack for student. I recommend targeting them one by one, based on what you see students needing to practice.

First Pre-Skills to Teach

Though dependent on grade level, these techniques are primarily pre-skills. In the Common Core, students begin practicing analysis in the second grade, so these pre-skills prepare secondary students to do a secondary version of the standards with more complex texts.

1. Analyzing a prompt.
2. Analyzing a specific pieces of evidence.
3. The language to use for writing with evidence and reasoning.
4. Organizing pieces of evidence and their reasoning.
5. Writing with stamina (students being able to take said information and turn it into writing in 20 minutes or less).

Standard Analysis Writing Techniques to Teach

Again, it may depend on grade level, but here are some general considerations I make with 9th and 10th graders in mind.

1. Writing a claim inductively (gathering the evidence and generating a claim from it).
2. Introducing quotes grammatically.
3. Gathering strong and thorough evidence.

Advanced Analysis Writing Techniques to Teacher

1. Setting your own analytical purpose.
2. Writing a deductive claim that needs evidence.
3. Managing quotes vs. paraphrasing vs. using one- or two-word quotes.
4. Adding a fermata to wrap up their paragraphs.

Start With This Literary Analysis How To Guide

If you are looking for a resource, check out this bestseller from my shop. I have used this resource repeatedly in 9^th and 11^th grades for students who need a refresher on the basics of analytical paragraphs. They start developing these skills in elementary school, so having this guide frees me up to focus the whole class on what’s fresh at their grade level when it comes to analytical writing. This hacks guide lives as a quick-reference on my class page for students, but can also serve as a basis for mini-lessons when students need differentiated instruction during writing workshop. Enjoy! 

My students set reading goals every six weeks, and over the course of the year, I want them to become readers who read along the x-, y-, and z-axes. If those math terms send chills up your spine, think of it as horizontal, vertical, and diagonal reading. All three dimensions are important to becoming a well rounded (ha!) reader.

Horizontal (x-axis) reading is done with genres and authors a student loves. Instead of getting annoyed by a student’s insistence on reading the umpteenth book in a simplistically written fantasy series, recognize it for what it is: the development of expertise, and therefore, fluency. I love conferring with horizontal readers about an author’s style or the tropes of genre, types of thinking that require one to read a lot of a specific kind of text. People can sprint across level ground, and this momentum is the key to flight. Most students who “hate reading” are willing to revise that statement once they can name an author or genre that they enjoy. Without that concession, students will not be interested in or be ready to access the other two dimensions of reading.

Diagonal (z-axis) reading happens when students read books in different genres that have similar elements to their favorite genres. The reading level is typically similar; the stretch comes from the new genre. Students may believe that they only like one type of book, but this is where their minds can open to other possibilities. Because diagonal reading offers some degree of challenge, it prepares students for the final dimension.

Vertical (y-axis) reading challenges students to read harder books, typically in their favorite genres. It raises the stakes without changing too many things at once. A challenging book in an unfamiliar genre is not appropriate for any but the most confident readers.

In the spirit of 3-D reading, I’m launching a new feature on the blog where I identify a few books in each direction based on a starter text. I’ll talk through my thinking, so that way you can create your own 3-D text sets to help students find that next read. I’d love for you to share your own 3-D sets as a guest blogger or request that I “do” a particular book.

Here’s an example I created after a book club in English 9 finished reading We Were Here by Matt de la Peña.

We Were Here is about a boy serving time in a group home for a crime that is not revealed until the end of the book. It’s a YA book, but because of its length and how it’s written, it’s on the more challenging end.

Horizontal Choices–I Will Save You by Matt de la Peña is by the same author and deals with a similar situation. Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos is similarly categorized because although it is a memoir, it’s first-person narrative shows someone in late adolescence/early adulthood navigating the consequences of his involvement in the drug trade. Again, similar voice and content to We Were Here.  Rikers High by Paul Volponi is also juvenile hall novel. It’s based on Volponi’s experiences teaching incarcerated youths on Rikers Island. All three of these authors have a large body of work, great for students needing further horizontal recommendations.

Diagonal Choices–The Living by Matt de la Peñagives students the same author, but it’s about a cruise ship disaster, so it takes them from teen life to thriller books. Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles is about a popular girl and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks falling in love when they are partnered in chemistry class. It offers more romance than We Were Here while still dealing with the theme of what it means to be “good.” This book is hard to put down, so it’s a great introduction to romance, especially for male readers. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez is the most difficult of these three, because it’s nonfiction written at an adult level. It deals with trying to escape gang life in Los Angeles, so the setting is similar, but it dives deeper into questions of how and why teenagers get involved in criminal activity.

Vertical Choices—One of the many things I love about We Were Here is that the main character is a reader. He reads The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger over the course of the book, along with several other classics. These are the simpler of the classics mentioned in the book, which is why I chose them as good next-reads for ninth graders. Coming of age and friendship feature in these texts as well, but offer more complex language. Since they are shorter classics,  they also make good forays into challenge.

What other books have you given students after reading We Were Here? Are they horizontal, vertical, or diagonal? Is there another book you’d like me to gather choices for? I’m so excited for this blog to become a resource for finding that next book!