How to Analyze an Expository Essay
Expository writing, in general, is present everywhere. When you pick up a magazine or examine a newspaper article on the newsstand, you are reading a form of exposition because the author's main purpose of writing that article or essay is to inform the reader about a topic. In the classroom, many students are required to produce research papers about a specific topic, such as migration patterns of birds. The purpose of that research paper is to inform the reader, the teacher, about what are the migratory patterns of birds. Finally, at the workplace, many people are required to create business reports and memorandums to inform their supervisors and co-workers about the company's finances and progress. In order to analyze these expository samples effectively, you must first read the essay, determine the type of expository essay it is, perform a SOAPSTTONE on the essay sample, evaluate whether if the author was successful in conveying his or her purpose to the audience, and lastly, determine any personal relevance to the essay. The expository essay "How to Operate the Shower Curtain" by Ian Frazier will be used as a reference and model expository essay to make each step of the process more clear. The first step is to obviously read the essay. This will be a first read of the exposition, so do not fret about small details while reading it. The purpose for reading the essay is to provide an overview of the exposition. It will be pointless reading with careful attention to small details in the essay. If you get too carried away with it at this step, you will feel tired and brain-dead. Why would you pay any attention to figurative language, overall structure of the essay, and tone if you do not even understand the main ideas and topic of the essay? Reading the exposition first will give you a broad overview of what the author is trying to convey. For example, after reading "How to Operate the Shower Curtain," I had a generalization that the paper will be about how to