Title: Paragraph Development Part 2: Incorporating Evidence & Analysis
Speaker: After completing this module, you’ll be able to:
Title: Paragraph Development Review
Speaker: Paragraphs follow different formats depending on the writing genre. In this module, we focus specifically on paragraphs in scholarly writing. Click to learn what characteristics make up a paragraph in scholarly writing.
Speaker: We’ve discussed both length and focus thoroughly in the previous module, Introduction to Paragraph Development Part 1. In this module, we’ll now dive into the content of a paragraph!
Title: Paragraph Content
Speaker: Paragraph content consists of evidence and analysis. Click each term to learn what we mean by each of them.
Speaker: Analysis and evidence should always be paired together in a paragraph. If you include just analysis, you’ll create a paragraph of opinion, and you may not include specific details to support your ideas; if you include just evidence, you’ll create a paragraph that reports, but may not contribute to your argument. Paragraphs with just evidence may also be choppy without analysis to help link evidence together.
Click each term to see an example of it used ineffectively in isolation.
Speaker: Here’s a sample paragraph with both analysis and evidence. This paragraph is much more balanced, with evidence to support the writer’s ideas and analysis to link together the evidence.
Title: Knowledge Checks
Speaker: You’ve learned the two types of content within a paragraph: evidence and analysis. Now you’ll test what you’ve learned. Click to Begin the Knowledge Checks.
Title: Recap: Incorporating Evidence & Analysis
Speaker: Remember: Paragraph content should consist of both analysis and evidence.
Evidence refers to the source information writers find in their research. Analysis refers to connections writers make between evidence and interpretation of the evidence.
Title: What Is Evidence?
Speaker: Let’s first establish what we mean by evidence. Evidence is the research you incorporate in your writing to support and inform your ideas. Writers incorporate evidence through quoting, paraphrasing, or summary. Read the definitions of quoting and paraphrasing; click each to learn more about when and how to quote or paraphrase.
Title: Deconstructing Paraphrasing
Speaker: Paraphrasing works best when you identify a particular idea or piece of information you want to incorporate into your paragraph. It’s difficult to paraphrase an entire paragraph or section—that often results in summary.
Your writing voice consists of (a) your own sentence structure and (b) your own vocabulary. Sentence structure and vocabulary together help you create your own voice. When you paraphrase, you need to change these two things to successfully paraphrase a source into your own voice.
Click each component of strong paraphrasing to learn more.
Title: Paraphrasing Examples
Speaker: We’ve deconstructed what we mean by paraphrasing, but what does a paraphrase actually look like? Of course, each person will paraphrase differently; that’s because you and I could both read the same fact and we’d each paraphrase it in our own way. We might emphasize different details or talk about it differently in our own unique voices. Continue to explore examples of paraphrasing.
Speaker: You’ve seen examples of paraphrasing and the process one writer went through to paraphrase. One way to analyze paraphrasing examples is to compare them to the original quote. Click different parts of the paraphrase to see how it relates to the original quote.
Speaker: You’ve learned the characteristics of a strong paraphrase. Now it’s your chance to assess sample paraphrases, determining whether the paraphrase is a strong or weak example. Click to Begin the Knowledge Checks.
Title: Paraphrasing Strategies
Speaker: The process of paraphrasing can be difficult because it’s an active way of incorporating research. Paraphrasing also becomes more difficult if you’re new to scholarly writing or even new to the topic you’re reading about. It’s much easier to paraphrasing a topic you know intimately than one that’s new to you. Thus, strong paraphrasing often comes from a strong writing process.
Speaker: Let’s look now at the process of paraphrasing. You’ll watch two videos, one demonstrating a paraphrasing process and one discussing paraphrasing strategies. Both will help you with your own paraphrasing!
Title: Student Scenario #1: Amber
Speaker: Let’s explore our paraphrasing strategies in more detail. Amber is in her first course in her education program. She’s writing a paper about classroom management, and she wants to paraphrase from an article she found. However, the article’s authors discuss new ideas in vocabulary Amber isn’t familiar with. When Amber tries to paraphrase, she struggles because she’s not sure what she’s reading.
Which strategy should Amber use to help her paraphrase using her own voice?
Title: Student Scenario #2: Harrison
Speaker: Here is another student scenario: Harrison is writing a paper on business managers, and he’s found a source with many statistics that help support his idea that managers need to have training in order to be effective. The statistics he wants to include in his paper span an entire paragraph, so he tries to paraphrase that entire paragraph. However, his paraphrase is now very long and his sentence structure is similar to the original source.
Which strategy could Harrison use to help him paraphrase using his own voice?
Title: Student Scenario #3: Hillary
Speaker: Let’s look at a final student scenario: Hillary is paraphrasing her source, but is having a difficult time putting it in her own voice. She keeps thinking of the original way the source discussed the idea and can’t get that wording out of her mind.
Which strategy could Hillary use to help her paraphrase using her own voice?
Title: Recap: Appropriately Incorporating Evidence
Speaker: Here’s a recap of what we’ve learned in this tutorial:
Title: What Is Analysis?
Speaker: Let’s start at the beginning: What is analysis? Analysis involves interpreting, clarifying, commenting on, critiquing, contextualizing, explaining, or discussing the relevance of evidence for the reader. Essentially, analysis is your voice in your writing.
Speaker: Analysis can take multiple forms, and there isn’t one right way to analyze evidence. The approach you take and how you analyze evidence is up to you, the author, and your perspective on the evidence. Explore the different ways these authors chose to analyze the same piece of evidence and what influenced their choices.
Speaker: As you can see, analysis is individual to the author. Your analysis will look different than my analysis, and that’s expected. Really, with analysis, you’re answering this question: What do you want the reader to walk away from that paragraph knowing, understanding, or believing?
Speaker: As you’ve seen, different authors take different approaches to analysis. Here are some of the kinds of approaches you can take. Click each approach to see an example of it in practice.
Speaker: You’ve learned what analysis is in academic writing. Now it’s your chance to test what you’ve learned about analysis. Click to Begin the Knowledge Checks.
Title: Developing Analysis
Speaker: Now we know what analysis is, but how do you develop your own analysis? Because analysis is individual to the author there isn’t any one way to go about this. However, there are some techniques for developing your analysis you might find helpful. Click each technique to learn more.
Title: Consider Your Thesis Statement
Speaker: Your thesis statement is the driving factor of your paper, representing the argument in your paper. Because each paragraph should support and build that argument, your analysis should support and build that argument too.
To help you generate ideas for your analysis, go back to your thesis statement. Consider it and the main idea of your paragraph; then identify how they connect. Write that connection to form your analysis.
Title: Freewrite
Speaker: Freewriting is an activity that helps you generate ideas. We often recommend freewriting as a prewriting strategy, but it can be a great activity during the drafting of your paper as well. Freewriting involves opening a blank page and writing for a set amount of time, just letting your thoughts flow on the page. You could even focus your freewriting by including your paragraph at the top of the page.
Click to open the video demonstration of freewriting.
Title: Ask Yourself Leading Questions
Speaker: If you’re unsure how to analyze evidence, ask yourself these leading questions. These questions can help spark an idea you can include for your analysis.
Title: Examine Your Experience
Speaker: Another source of your analysis could be your own experience. Often Walden students are writing about topics that are in their field or that they have seen in practice. How does what you’re reading relate to that experience? What have you seen that could inform, contextualize, clarify, or correct the evidence in your paragraph?
Reflect on your experience to generate ideas of what you could say in your analysis.
Title: Recap: Analyzing Evidence
Speaker: Remember: Analysis involves adding your voice to the paragraph. Use strategies to develop ideas for your analysis. To help you, download the analysis strategies we discussed for future reference!
Title: Evidence & Analysis in Paragraphs
Speaker: Thus far we’ve discussed analysis and evidence separately, but of course, they actually appear togetherwithin paragraphs. Now we’ll explore how evidence and analysis are incorporated to develop a paragraph. One way to think about evidence and analysis is to compare it to a paper in general: Scholarly papers are structured with an introduction, then body paragraphs, and then a conclusion.
Scholarly paragraphs are structured in a similar way: They start with a topic sentence, then analysis and evidence, and then a wrap-up sentence. The analysis and evidence in your paragraph function like the body paragraphs in your paper.
Speaker: Let’s explore body paragraphs and analysis and evidence to see their similarities in more detail. Click each category to learn how it applies to body paragraphs and analysis and evidence sentences.
Title: Review: Topic Sentences & Wrap-Up Sentences
Speaker: Paragraphs consist of more than just evidence and analysis; they also include topic sentences and wrap-up sentences. If you’d like to learn more about these types of sentences, be sure to complete Part 1 of this module series.
Speaker: Let’s review a sample paragraph. Click each type of sentence to see it in the paragraph and learn more.
Title: Analysis in Wrap-Up Sentences
Speaker: As we just discovered, wrap-up sentences can also be very similar to analysis. Wrap-up sentences give a sense of closure to a paragraph, and as part of that they might offer the reader an interpretation. However, they certainly don’t have to; a wrap-up sentence might also be simply a restatement of the paragraph’s main idea. Just know that while we might talk about them separately, analysis and wrap-up sentences also often overlap.
Speaker: Practice identifying and exploring analysis and evidence in this sample paragraph. Read the paragraph thoroughly, then click each underlined sentence to learn more.
Speaker: While including analysis in your paragraph is important, just including analysis isn’t enough: You also need to clearly connect your analysis with your evidence. We do that through connective phrasing and transitions. Read the evidence and the analysis that follows. Notice how without any connective phrasing, we aren’t sure how they relate to one another? Click each option to see how different connective phrasing can help relate the evidence to the analysis for your reader.
Speaker: We’ve explored what evidence and analysis looks like in a paragraph, including the various ways writers can incorporate it, depending on their purpose and paragraph.
Now test your knowledge of evidence and analysis in these Knowledge Check questions; click Begin when you’re ready.
Title: Recap: Evidence & Analysis in Paragraphs
Speaker: Let’s review:
OASIS