Analytical Essay
First draft due Friday, December 1
Final draft before revisions due Monday, December 4
5-7 pages, typed, double-spaced, and stapled
For this assignment you will write an analytical essay about a YouTube video. The video should have at least 5,000 views, and ideally the video addresses a subject that you are interested in. The video should either be in English or have English subtitles. Aim for a video that is five minutes in duration or shorter.
The specific type of analysis that you will do is critical evaluation of a how-to video. You will not analyze the video as a fan. Instead, you will analyze a video as an expert who draws on experience to evaluate techniques that are presented in the video. Imagine that you are writing for someone who is considering using the video to learn or refine his or her own techniques.
Try to limit the level of difficulty of this essay by using a video about a topic with a readily identifiable audience and with readily verifiable results. Avoid videos that attempt to provide instructions to perform a task that depends heavily on the specific contexts, experiences, and physiologies of individual viewers. For example, writing about getting to sleep or being able to manage time will be extraordinarily difficult topics because of the immense variation of possible audiences. Aim instead for videos with audience members that have a lot in common and that have relatively clear standards for success or failure. Examples of successful essays evaluated videos on making particular dishes, performing specific tasks in car maintenance, applying make-up, or learning the basics of playing a guitar. Language Use note: use the term audience members, not audiences, when you are referring to more than one person in a specific audience.
To further limit the level of difficulty, try to find a video with enough categories of comments for you to write several paragraphs about the audience reception.
In order to test your video you will need to try to do what your video teaches. For example, if your video is about making a dish then you will need to try using the video to make the dish. Make sure that you follow the directions in the video as closely as possible so that you can convincingly evaluate the instructions in the video.
Research Question
The basic question you need to answer is whether you would recommend the video that you select to a particular audience. Your thesis statement should mention the video and identify the audience, and ideally your thesis statement will hint at criticisms that you will discuss in the essay.
Outline
You can think of this essay as four mini-essays that you develop through multiple paragraphs. The first three mini-essays should be objective, and then in the evaluation you should draw on the material that you presented previously in order to recommend or not recommend the video to a specific audience:
- Summary
- Audience Response
- Experiment/Personal Narrative
- Evaluation
The summary should consist of a scene-by-scene summary of the video. The summary should be in chronological order. It is important for you to understand the difference between a set of instructions and a summary. You should write a summary, not a set of instructions.
You should devote several paragraphs to the reception of the video given in the comments. Reading comments and creating categories that accurately reflect the different kinds of comments will be one of the hardest tasks to perform for this essay. In one paragraph you should give a general description of the reception of the video that accounts for exceptions from the most common kind of response. You should scan at least the 100 most recent comments and the 20 top comments in order to write your general overview of the reception. In the following paragraphs you should consider at least three different kinds of comments: the responses of people who have used the video; questions; and other comments that are relevant to your evaluation. Most likely you will write about at least one of the top three comments. You should directly quote the comments, and PIE paragraphs will probably be appropriate in the discussions of comments that are important for your evaluation of the video.
You should write a personal narrative about how you have tried to use the video to learn how to do what the video teaches. The most important parts of this narrative are points when you did not strictly follow directions from the video or when you had to supplement the video with your own knowledge or with other resources. For example, if you substituted ingredients or equipment in a recipe then you should mention the difference between your process and the process from the video. If you cannot test out the video you cannot write a credible evaluation. Your evaluation becomes more credible the more exactly you reproduce the process (experiment) presented in the video.
Before the conclusion you should have at least one paragraph about your evaluation of the video. In addition to accounting for the experiences of others who have tried the video and your own experience, your evaluation should include advice for improving the video and/or advice about who would be more or less appropriate audience members for the video.
Process
You are required to post a journal entry with the title and channel name of your video and your research question. You are required to receive feedback on an initial outline. Before you turn in a complete draft of the essay you are required to do a workshop in which you evaluate a classmate's essay and a classmate evaluates your essay.
The expectations for your essay are very high, and it is important for you to develop a writing process for producing polished and well-informed essays. You should expect to do multiple drafts of this essay. After you receive feedback on the first draft you should revise the essay, and you should continue to receive feedback and revise the essay until either the end of the quarter or the essay is an A-quality essay.
The essay will be graded according to the essay-grading rubric for EWRT1A. If you use outside sources then you will need to include MLA-style citations and a works cited page with your essay.