Stop Telling Students to “Analyze.” Teach Them How to Actually Do It.

If I had a dollar for every time I wrote “analyze this further” on a student essay, I probably would be writing this from my yacht.

For years, I gave students the same feedback over and over: Go deeper. Explain why this matters. Analyze the quote. Then the next essay would come around, and I’d write the exact same comments all over again. At some point, I had to admit that maybe the problem wasn’t that my students wouldn’t analyze. Maybe they genuinely didn’t know what I wanted them to do.

Because think about it: “analyze” is actually a HUGE ask. English teachers know what analysis sounds like. We can read a paragraph and immediately tell whether a student is summarizing, identifying, or actually digging into the text. But students don’t necessarily see that distinction. If they found a literary device, included a quote, and wrote “this shows that…” afterward, they think they analyzed it. And honestly? Why wouldn’t they? Then we hand the paper back with MORE ANALYSIS scrawled in the margin as though that clears things up.

Stop Letting “Shows” Do All the Work

Students LOVE the word shows. The quote shows that he is angry. The imagery shows that the setting is dangerous. The author shows the theme of power. And, of course, when they decide it’s time to get fancy, shows becomes displays.

The problem isn’t just that those sentences get painfully repetitive after you’ve graded 75 essays. Shows lets students get away without deciding exactly what the author is doing. Compare it to words like reveals, reinforces, contrasts, emphasizes, foreshadows, undermines, complicates, suggests, characterizes, or challenges. If a student says the author contrasts two characters, now they have to explain the contrast. If a moment complicates our understanding of a character, they have to explain what we thought before, what we know now, and why that change matters.

The better verb actually forces better thinking.

That realization completely changed the way I approached analytical writing. Vocabulary wasn't just something I could give students to make their essays sound more sophisticated. It could actually give them a framework for figuring out what they wanted to say.

Analysis Shouldn't Start When the Essay Does

This was another mistake I made for way too long. We'd read the book. We'd discuss it. We'd annotate it. Then it was essay time, and suddenly I expected students to produce beautiful, sophisticated literary analysis.

Except...when exactly had they been practicing that?

If a student annotates a passage and writes SYMBOLISM in the margin, that's identification. It's useful, but it's not analysis. I want the next thought. Okay, so what? Why did the author put that symbol here? What does it reveal? What is changing? What larger idea could this connect to?

That's why I started teaching annotation almost like detective work: Notice it. Label it. Analyze it. Notice something worth paying attention to. Figure out what the author is doing. Then ask why it matters.

Now we're not waiting until essay day and asking students to magically become literary critics. They're practicing analytical thinking while they're actually reading. By the time they start writing, they already have ideas worth writing about.

Give Them the Tools First

Sometimes I think we're afraid that giving students too much guidance will somehow make the work less rigorous. But giving a student analytical verbs doesn't give them the analysis. Teaching them what questions to ask doesn't give them the answers. Showing them how to move from observation to interpretation doesn't eliminate critical thinking.

It teaches them how to do it.

Eventually, I want students to notice something interesting in a text and automatically start wondering, Why did the author do that? Why here? What does this change? Why does this matter? But that's a habit of mind, and habits have to be built.

So yes, I still tell students to analyze. I just don't think “analyze this further” is particularly useful feedback until we've actually taught them what that means.

And if nothing else, maybe we can finally retire “this quote shows…”

Ready to move beyond “this shows…”?

I created a free Literary Analysis Verb Bank full of stronger, more precise verbs students can use during annotation, discussion, and analytical writing. It's the kind of resource I like students to keep handy so that when they know what they want to say but don't quite have the language for it, they have somewhere to start. Click the Free Resource button at the top of the page to snag it!