The Essay That Lists Techniques
A student's analytical essay on a novel contains this paragraph: 'The author uses a metaphor, a simile and short sentences. There is also personification. This creates a strong mood and makes the reader feel the character's pain. The author does this to show that life is hard.' The teacher's criterion for the 'language features' row requires explanation of how features construct meaning in context. The student insists the paragraph is fine because 'it names the techniques and says what they do'. The class has been told to use the formula 'feature + evidence + effect + purpose'. The student has three more body paragraphs built the same way.
1. Diagnose precisely what is missing from the paragraph, using the feature-evidence-effect-purpose structure as a checklist.
Read the worked answer
Evidence is absent: the paragraph names techniques but quotes nothing, so no claim can be checked against the text. Effect is vague: 'strong mood' and 'feel the character's pain' could describe almost any sad scene, so they do not explain this text.
Purpose is asserted rather than argued: 'life is hard' is a platitude, not an interpretation of the novel's concerns. The link between the technique and that idea is missing.
Only the feature column is genuinely complete, and even there the list is undifferentiated. Naming four devices without showing how they interact treats technique as a checklist rather than a system of choices. The repair is to select one or two features, quote briefly, and trace a specific effect on the reader's understanding of a specific character or idea, then connect that to the novel's larger argument.
2. The student must fix three more paragraphs. Propose a revision strategy that addresses the pattern rather than patching sentences.
Read the worked answer
The pattern is technique-spotting followed by generic emotion, so sentence-level patching will reproduce it. A better strategy is to reverse the order of composition: start each paragraph with a claim about meaning, then ask which features produce it.
For example, begin with 'The novel presents grief as something the characters can only approach through objects', then select the metaphor and short sentences that enact that distance. This forces evidence to be chosen for relevance and makes the effect specific.
A second step is a banned-phrase list for the revision: 'strong mood', 'makes the reader feel', 'life is hard'. Removing these forces the student to articulate a precise effect. Finally, have the student write the purpose sentence first and test whether the chosen evidence supports it; if not, either the evidence or the claim must change.