1. Introduce the topic, provide some overview of the articles you will use, and then have a thesis statement that shows how you will apply the articles to answer a question about the material you have chosen.
2. Summarize and paraphrase the relevant parts of the articles, and contrast and compare. You may find the articles all agree on some points, but have somewhat different interpretations of other points. The ideas you select from the articles will be your “analytic tool” or “theoretical framework.”
3. Present the material you have chosen in, and use the ideas from the article to address your question.
4. Your paper can also address the usefulness of the articles and the “analytic tools” you derive from them. You might find that none of the articles anticipates the kind of material you have found, or you might find that you need to adapt and expand the analytic tool after trying to apply it to the material. The strongest research often expands the theoretical framework of a debate or discussion, rather than just applying it to new material.
5. A brief conclusion that does not restate the paper, but perhaps points towards unanswered questions or future research or broader concerns.
Using an Analytic Tool
An analytic tool is a theory, a principle, or a definition that provides a useful framework for discussing a problem or engaging in a debate. However, it’s important to recognize that an analytic tool is itself the product of an argument and discussion, and all analytic tools are continually open to extension, revision, or even refutation and replacement by a more useful one for the situation.
An analytic tool is valuable, and sometimes even surprising point of view, a way of interpreting some phenomenom, person, event, policy, pattern, that otherwise might be hard to explain (WR 182). In different courses, you will be taught theories that you can apply this way. Obviously, the analytic tools in Chemistry are different from those in History, which are different from those in English Literature.
However, it is important to also evaluate the tool as you use it. There may be times the tool and the subject matter are a smooth fit, and this is not the main concern. But you should always approach an analytic tool or theoretical framework with a critical perspective. Here are questions you can ask about the analytic tool:
1. Usefulness: Does it help you understand the material you are analyzing? Do you understand the analytic tool well enough that you can apply it to the material?
2. Relevance: Does it give you new insights, or answer a previously insoluble problem, or alert you to an aspect of a problem you hadn’t previously considered?
3. Originality: Does it really produce a new idea, or is it merely replicating older ideas in different language?
4. Clarity: can you understand the new ideas, and are they logically coherent?
5. Application: does it apply in the situation it’s being used in, or the situation you plan to use it? For instance, these days the concept of “addiction” has expanded from discussions of physical addiction to alcohol and hard drugs to be applied to things like video games, sugar, social media, etc. It’s certainly worth asking how much of the analytic framework developed in discussions of heroin addiction apply if you are talking about someone being addicted to Facebook, and what aspects of that analytic framework need to be modified.
6. Implications and assumptions: every analytic tool is the product of a discussion and an argument, and every analytic tool carries a set of implications and assumptions that might not be made explicit in that discussion. It’s always worth thinking about what it might mean to take a particular analytic tool seriously as a statement about how to understand the world.
7. Accuracy: does the analytic tool itself rest on solid arguments and proof, and does it seem accurate to your understanding of the subject?
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