First, a Short Exercise
As practice in moving from observation to analysis, ask yourself what you see (what cartoonist Barry Blitt depicts in this week’s New Yorker cover), then ask yourself (1) why he may have included some of the details, and (2) what he is trying to convey.
Tomorrow in class, I will return your analysis drafts with my annotations, and you will have the class period to devote to revising on your laptops and tablets. Along with my handwritten notes, I will distribute a handout with general notes to consult as you proceed. An additional copy of those notes follows.
- The opening paragraph of your essay should include a short summary that serves as a lead-in to your thesis statement. Remember that summaries are objective by nature. If you comment in any way on the quality of your subject (the text you are writing about), you turn from summary to commentary or analysis. That should not occur until you present your thesis statement, which will follow the summary.
- Summaries are written in the third person. No singular or plural first- or second-person pronouns should appear in your summary. In other words, you should not use the words “I,” “me,” “you,” “we,” or “us.” MLA style requires the present tense in writing about literature and other texts.
- An effective thesis makes a claim, one that readers will question, and some will disagree with. Avoid these thesis missteps:
A thesis that makes no claim. (“This analysis explores the Three Laws of Robotics”).
A thesis that is obviously true or a statement of fact (“For Monica and David, and for any other parent-child relationship, communication is key”).
A thesis that restates conventional wisdom (“Powell and Donovan’s troubleshooting demonstrates that two heads are better than one”).
A thesis that makes an overly broad claim (“Rapid technological advances are good [or bad]”).
- On first reference, refer to the author by first and last name. On subsequent references, refer to the author by last name, not first.
- On first reference, refer to characters by first and last name. On subsequent references, refer to the Swintons by their first names, and refer to Powell and Donovan by their last names (because the narrator refers to them by last name).
- Text is a blanket term for all your readings. When you refer to a particular reading, do not use a blanket term. Instead, identify it by type: short story or trilogy of stories. Do not refer to a short story as a chapter, a novel, or a passage. Factual errors such as those will undermine your analysis.
- Write in active voice. The subject of the sentence should perform the action. Avoid passive constructions such as this: It is seen that Speedy malfunctions. Instead, simply write, Speedy malfunctions.
- Do not foreground the words page and paragraph in your sentences. In other words, do not write on page twenty-two . . . . Page and paragraph numbers are for parenthetical citations.
- For conventional academic writing, MLA’s editors recommend you use first-person sparingly, if you use it at all. If you find it difficult to write in third person, compose your analysis in first person, then afterward recast it in third person.
- In your drafts, some of you presented ideas that you heard in class as if they were your own, which is a form of plagiarism. If you mention an idea that I presented in class, you should introduce the idea with a signal phrase, such as this: As Professor Jane Lucas has observed, telling David not to grieve, as Monica does, indicates that she perceives him as human because machines cannot grieve.
- In the example above, the signal phrase verb is past tense because it refers to a statement from a previous class, but Monica and David’s verbs are present tense (does, perceives) because of the present-tense MLA rule. See https://style.mla.org/literary-present-tense/.
- If you paraphrase a statement of mine from class, include the following work-cited entry at the end of your revision. You will need to consult your class notes to identify the correct date.
Lucas, Jane. English 1103: Academic Research and Writing. 21 September 2026, High Point University.
- Do not use the phrase in conclusion or any variation on it at the beginning of the final paragraph of your essay. While that transitional phrase can be useful in a speech (because the audience cannot see that the end is near), there is no reason to write those words when readers can see for themselves that only one paragraph remains. For more, see Harvard University Writing Center’s notes on conclusions: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/conclusions.
Kudos
Avery Broadbent, Madison Haugk, and Devyn Jones received bonus assignment credit for correctly identifying the typo on the cover of one of the early editions of I, Robot pictured above. What is the error? For the answer, see the end of today’s post.
Not the AI Tool Called Einstein (Albert, the Physicist)
In his New Yorker essay “Should the Classroom Be More Like the Gym,” Dan Rockmore addresses the viral A.I. tool Einstein–a short-lived stunt and mostly hype–that would not only generate students’ assignments but also post them on their behalf on the Canvas learning management system.
Bonus Assignment
One of the science fiction stories we have studied includes a reference to the real Einstein (Albert, the physicist). Which story is it?
Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer
- Review Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” and Brian Aldiss’s supertoys stories to locate the reference to Einstein.
- Compose a response of one or more complete sentences that includes the title and author of the short story, a signal phrase that introduces your quotation from the story–a phrase or clause that mentions Einstein by name–and a parenthetical citation with the page number.
- Post your comment as a reply to this blog post by 7:30 a.m. on Friday, October 2.
- To post your comment, click the title, “ENG 1103: Analysis Notes . . . ,” then scroll down to the bottom of the post. There you will see the image of an airmail envelope with a rectangular box for your comment. Type your comment in the box and hit return. Voila! You have submitted your answer. I will make the comments visible after Friday’s deadline.
Next Up
On Wednesday, I will return your handwritten drafts (with my notes), and you will have the class period to begin revising on your laptops. Because the first week of October is Fall Break, you have two additional weeks to revise before you submit your analysis to Blackboard and publish it on WordPress. The due date for your revised analysis is Wednesday, October, 14 (before class). The deadline is Friday, October 16 (before class).
