Learn How to Analyze a Text
To analyze means to break something down into its parts and examine them. Analyzing is a vital skill for successful readers. Analyzing a text involves breaking down its ideas and structure to understand it better, think critically about it, and draw conclusions. This unit covers different strategies for analyzing print and digital media, as well as how to create graphic organizers to help you analyze what you read. Click on one of the areas below to learn more.
- Writing Patterns: Learn how to identify the patterns used by writers to organize their ideas. This will help you anticipate how a text will develop an idea and improve your own writing.
- Evaluating an Author’s Intent: Learn how to evaluate an author’s intent by reading critically to discern point of view, purpose, intended audience, and tone.
- Evaluating an Argument: Learn how to evaluate the arguments you come across as you read in order to uncover biases and logical fallacies.
- Evaluating a Website: Learn how to evaluate websites for reliability, accuracy, and relevance.
- Creating a Timeline: Learn how to create a timeline to organize and remember the information you gather from the texts you read.
- Creating an Outline: Learn how to make an outline of what you read so that you can understand how ideas are organized and related in the text.
- Creating a Concept Map: Learn how to create a concept map to visualize the main ideas in a text.
- Creating a Story Map: Learn how to make a story map to improve your understanding of narrative-based texts like novels, short stories, and histories.
