Literary Analysis Essay Examples: How to Use Them

Literature teachers love to assign literary essays. Whether your instructor teaches you how to write the essay or not, you can always benefit from using an example essay. Since literary essays are more commonly assigned specialty essays, samples are easier to find than more obscure essays like article reviews or comparative analyses. When you have a good sample essay, you should know how to use it. Here are some tips:

Use the Essay as a Template

Since students can no longer turn in essay they find online as their own work, they need to know how to use the essay. The best thing to do is to use it as a template so you can follow the pattern of the essay. If you go sentence by sentence through the essay, you can craft your essay alongside the sample. You do not copy the template, but you use the template as your guide for an entirely new essay. So, if the template essay has six sentences in the introductory paragraph, you should follow the formatting for those six sentences. Notice where the original author put transitions, what the topics of the sentences are, and how they flow into each other. Then, you can write your paragraph with the same style and structure, but with words that are appropriate for your topic.

Use the Essay to Learn about Sentence Structure

Student writers tend to forget about sentence variety. This means that their essays tend to lack style and flow. When you use a template essay, you can use the sentence variety in that essay to inspire your own sentence variety. If a sentence in the template uses an adverb phrase to start the sentence, then you do the same thing in your essay - just with a different adverb and topic.

Notice Where the Evidence and Explanations are Placed

Students also tend to struggle with organization of body paragraphs. You can use the body paragraphs in the sample essay to inspire the placement of your evidence and explanations. If you notice that the original essay has three pieces of evidence in each paragraph and they are all directly quoted, then you do the same thing in your essay. Use the same amount of explanatory sentences, too. Again, be sure that you do not copy anything from the sample essay into your essay or your instructor will notice and you will be accused of plagiarism.