Writing With an Informative Aim, Essay Example

English 101 is an important course to take because among other things, it helps to develop your analytical thinking and writing skills.  Regardless of which program of studies a student undertakes, he or she is going to do a lot of writing; and very often it involves analytical writing, something that many educators wish their students could do better.  Analytical writing, basically, defines, explains, and interprets in a succinct and concise manner something so that readers can easily understand it. Consequently, for this paper the question asks “ is  analytical writing  a valuable skill to possess, especially for students, faculty, and administration.”

In analytical writing the information must be sufficient, plausible, and pertinent.  It involves breaking something big apart into pieces and then seeking to understand the relationships between them after which they should be organized accordingly.  It is important that the analytically written informative work be done for an identified audience.  Many people have found themselves in a physician’s office for a health issue and when asked by a friend what the doctor said about their problem, they somewhat shamefully say, “I do not know.”

If someone has very little medical knowledge and the doctor tells him that he might have GERD, brought on by a suspected hiatus hernia, he has no idea what might be wrong with him and could be too embarrassed to ask the physician to explain what (s)he means.

In analytical writing the reader and writer actually work together collaboratively because the former is, basically, given the facts in terminology and sentence structure that (s)he can understand and, then, makes up his or her own mind.  It is anything but an argumentative essay. It is also not a summary of an article, but an analysis thereof.  Asking why and how questions is essential in analytical writing, which has a resemblance to persuasive writing.

There are advantages and drawbacks to this type of learning.  It would be difficult to carry out by somebody who does not consider who the audience is, who is argumentative, verbose, who digresses and who does not present sufficient information for a reader to be able to make up his or her own mind about the matter.  Most often research has a thesis statement, but in analytical writing, one asks a question instead and, then, attempts to find sufficient information for the writer and reader to collaboratively answer the question. Individuals who tend to include filler sentences into their writing in order to meet the required length would find the analytical method difficult as well.  However, when a student has the ability to write an analytical essay, (s)he has the ability to analyze, something that is essential in many programs of studies; in careers; and, to a certain extent, in all areas of life.  While analytical writing may be difficult for some students to learn, the only drawback for them is that they must work harder at it than those for whom it is not so difficult.  The result of mastering it, however, is that they will do better in virtually all of their studies because of it and will pass with excellent scores the various institutional admission tests that require a sample of—often timed– analytical writing.

While readers can—and should—make up their own minds about the answer to this paper’s question, this student’s reading up on the subject and experience in it results in her saying that analytical writing is a valuable skill to possess for students, faculty and admin.