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The Context of
Critical Analysis
Now take an article from a newspaper or a magazine such as Time or Newsweek and, in the same way, analyse what the writer is doing in each paragraph.
Compare your notes for each piece of writing and then discuss with a fellow student how far the different purposes of each writer nave determined the different patterns of presentation.
3 Appendix 5 contains an extract from a Biology textbook in which the author is discussing the relationship between the behaviour of animals and the breadth of their habitat.
Read the entire extract carefully. Then, following the pattern we adopted for the other texts in this chapter, write in the right-hand margin those key words which help you to understand what is happening in the text.
Compare your results with a fellow student and then with the full class. After you have isolated the key words, discuss together the comments that might go in the left-hand margin. (Is the author summarizing the present state of knowledge? Is she providing evidence for or against that view? Is she establishing the reasons for uncertainty in the evidence? Is she drawing a conclusion about the evidence?)
You might also go on to compare the style of argument in this passage with that in the passage from Drucker and Heizer (pp. 55 -58). In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they both different from the anthropology student's writing (pp. 50-52)?
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