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Analysis: breaking apart something complex to better understand it.
Analysis: breaking apart something complex to better understand it.
Analytical thinking helps us understand our world.
Analytical thinking helps us understand our world.
Reading a troubling text message or email, we study each word and punctuation mark to guess the true tone.
Applying for a job or school, we pore over websites in search of details that will help us impress our audience.
Training to improve a skill, we carefully observe professionals’ every move to see how slight changes impact results.
Watching our favorite athletes or artists, we dwell in the details of how one play, phrase, or gesture leads into the next to create a worthwhile whole.
So what makes analytical writing difficult?
So what makes analytical writing difficult?
Too often, teachers ask students to develop their claim before analytical thinking has occurred.
That thinking model looks something like this:
While such "correct answer" thinking is familiar, it doesn't permit the discoveries made possible by analysis.
Analysis' purpose is to better understand our subject before we can articulate clear claims.
And analytical thinking can (and should) get messy. It relies on:
- noticing patterns
- asking about relationships
- acknowledging anomalies
- taking time to explore, dwell, and revisit
Only after we've taken apart our subject to discover how and why it works can we say anything valuable about it.
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