Creating a Thesis and an Outline for a Critical Analysis Essay
As the name implies, a critical analysis essay is an essay that criticizes the work of other people. As a critique, your job is to compare and contrast the intended purpose of a text with the actual result produced. Critical analysis essays come in one form only: criticism. You may choose to criticize any kind of literary work.
The steps to writing a critical analysis essay are similar to writing other essays. They include choosing a topic, making research, constructing a thesis statement, organizing an outline, and writing your essay. However, many people may encounter difficulties with creating an outline and thesis statement for their critical analysis essay. In this article, you’ll see how the best outline and thesis can be constructed.
Critical Analysis Essay Outline
Usually, the outline for your essay is a guideline of how you want your write-up to be structured and organized. It is important therefore that you do all of the necessary research before you create an outline for your critical analysis essay. Further, your outline should be done on a worksheet, and away from your final writing pad. This would give room for fewer errors and more corrections when necessary.
The Introduction
The introduction is what ushers your reader into reading your essay. Your introduction should be catchy and enticing enough to spur your reader into reading some more. A weak introduction might make your reader lose interest in whatever is in your essay. A key feature of your introduction is the thesis statement.
Critical analysis thesis statement
A critical analysis thesis statement would cover every point that the body of your work talks about. The critical analysis thesis would also give an insight into the importance of your criticism.
The Body
The body of your essay is where every detail is duly addressed. It is arranged in paragraphs with each point being allocated a paragraph. Usually, writers would make the body of their essay three paragraphs but it depends on the complexity of your topic. Your body and introduction must be well linked.
Conclusion
Your concluding note comes last immediately after the body of your work. This is an entirely different paragraph that would do justice to summarizing the work and rephrasing your thesis statement. You must wrap up your well-structured research essay with an equally mind-blowing conclusion.
How to Write a Critical Analysis Thesis
Developing your thesis statement comes before you begin writing your essay because you’ll only find it in the introductory paragraph:
- Choose the text for criticism
The first obvious step to writing a critical analysis thesis is picking the text that you want to criticize. This could be a book, news article, poetry, etc.
- Identify the goal of the text
Once you have picked your choice text, you must identify the aim and reason why the author originally wrote the text. You may achieve this by reading the text a few times until you understand what it means.
- Write out the points you want to criticize
As you read through, jot down the area that you would like to criticize. Sometimes, you’ll find that the text does not need huge criticism and that the author has done a great job. You may acknowledge the effort of the effort and still give mild criticism.
- Get your facts or evidence and outline your points
Your evidence may come from the test you’re criticizing or an external source. For the thesis statement, the important thing is outlining points that should form your thesis statement. Your critical analysis thesis statement is literally a combination of your findings, evidence, and concluding note.
- Map out a conclusion
Did the author of the text you’re analyzing achieve the goal of the text? How well did the text do justice to its goal? These are some of the questions your conclusion should cover and they must be included in the thesis.
- Create your thesis
Having reached this stage, your critical analysis thesis should look like this example:
Oswald’s book Dogs and Humans tells the true nature of dogs as domestic animals but falls short of hitting the hammer on the important aspect of the relationship between dogs and man in terms of communication and bonding patterns.
Conclusion
A critical analysis essay requires an outline and a good critical analysis thesis for the best result. Now, you know how to create your thesis and outline for your critical analysis essay.