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ENG 1001 Home Page Essay 1

ESSAY 1: INTRODUCTORY ANALYSIS ESSAY

This essay will have three main components:

You should assume a reader who is unfamiliar with the place you’ve chosen. You also should assume a reader who is well-educated and professional, such as a college professor, a sociologist, a city official, or perhaps even a tourist. Your purpose in writing this essay is to help your reader understand this place and to appreciate its value. To that end, your one-sentence thesis statement should identify the place and summarize its importance or significance.

1. Identification of Place

You should choose a place you know well, since what you write about this place must be based on your own knowledge and experience, not from sources, such as websites, articles, etc. The place may be quite large, such as an entire community, or it may be much smaller, such as a specific neighborhood within that community. Your goal is to choose a place about which you have plenty to write; however, the place should also be specific enough that you can provide an in-depth analysis of its key qualities.

As indicated above, your thesis statement should identify the place you've chosen.

NOTE: The only restriction on your choice of place is that you may not choose your own home or any specific location in your own home.

2. Basic Background

In writing this component, keep in mind that your reader is not familiar with the place you have chosen. For instance, if you choose your hometown, you will need to indicate where it is located, how long ago it was established, its population, and so forth, in addition to previewing the key qualities that make it an important or significant place.

This section of your essay should be no longer than one or possibly two paragraphs. Its purpose is to provide the context for your more detailed examination of the place’s key qualities and the place’s overall importance or significance.

3. Description and Explanation of Key Qualities

To be successful in this part of your essay, you need to identify four to six key qualities of the place you’ve chosen and, most likely, write one paragraph per quality. Your individual paragraphs should describe these qualities as they are manifested in the place, but, just as importantly, should explain how these qualities make the place important or significant―in other words, how they support your thesis statement. 

You should have at least four to six paragraphs for this component of your essay, which is the real “meat,” or substance, of your essay. That is, these paragraphs will provide the main support for your thesis statement.

Other Considerations

Be sure to include an effective introduction (including a thesis statement) and conclusion, to develop your ideas into carefully constructed paragraphs, and to employ correct and effective sentence structure, style, grammar, and mechanics.

In terms of style, you should use a formal style: avoid first-person pronouns (such as “I”), second-person pronouns (such as “you”), and slang (i.e. informal words, such as stuff, OK, freakin' cool). Instead of slang, use more formal language (e.g. things, activities, adequate, great, tremendous).