Paper Three: Analysis, Evaluation, Criticism, and/or Interpretation that Focuses on the Ideas of Others
This paper will usually be a college-level research paper, as the instructions indicate. Importantly, a good paper in this category is not a compilation or summary of other people’s words and ideas; the student-writer should analyze, evaluate, interpret, and/or synthesize information found through research. Source material should support and develop an original, insightful thesis about the topic that the writer has formulated after analyzing the subject.
The most basic requirement for this paper is the use of at least three credible sources. We want to see your ability to use these sources and to put them in conversation with each other and with your own ideas.
The thesis of this paper will often make a claim of some sort, but it won’t necessarily be as emphatic a claim as in the argument. In this type of essay, the author should have done enough research, interpretation, evaluation, and/or analysis on the topic to be able to express a personal, well considered view. This type of essay could offer the writer’s interpretation of a Shakespearean play, an analysis of an environmental problem, an evaluation of a particular therapeutic approach in counseling, or a critical examination of a theater performance. In other words, the paper must do more than simply present information: It needs to use information.
While aspects of this essay may overlap with the academic argument, the essays are distinct in that they showcase different things: the argument essay showcases your ability to take a position and convince your reader of it. This essay, on the other hand, showcases your ability to become a student-expert on a topic, finding all relevant source material and presenting it so that the reader gains new insight on your topic. In this essay, you will put experts in conversation with one another – and you will also be “present”: you must do something with the material. (This does not mean you must use “I”!)
The ideas in this paper must be fully developed and clearly presented. Source material should be used to aid development and support. Any quotation or paraphrase should be integrated into the student’s prose and connected clearly to the thesis. The writer should fastidiously attribute all source material. See Hacker for integration and documentation.
