Analytic Writing - Practicing Formal Academic Style

Last updated about 4 years ago
6 questions
Note from the author:
Practice incorporating quotations. Includes links to instructional slides and a reading assignment.
All the quotations used here are from "Catfish in the Bathtub." You may wish to have that essay open as you work.

Your job in each of the following sentences is to revise the examples so that:
  • They are grammatically correct
  • The quotations are formatted properly to conform to formal, academic style
There is no reason to change anything that is already correct. The sentences do not typically need complete and total revision. Rather, you are making small changes to make them correct and you are adding analysis.

Link to Catfish in the Bathtub

Link to Slides on Quote Formatting
Part I. Practice incorporating quotations smoothly into a sentence.
3

Revise the following sentence to use proper academic style when incorporating a quoted word or phrase into your sentence. Copy and paste the sample into the box and then edit it to reflect proper, academic style. You must retain THE ENTIRE quote, but you can change other parts of the sentence or move the quote within the sentence.

Kingston uses sensory imagery that appeals to our sense of hearing "the bird screams and the thud, thud of the turtles swimming in the boiling water."

3

Revise the following sentence to use proper academic style when incorporating a quoted word or phrase into your sentence. Copy and paste the sample into the box and then edit it to reflect proper, academic style. You must retain THE ENTIRE quote, but you can change other parts of the sentence or move the quote within the sentence.

The author's mother kept many strange ingredients in the house "a big brown hand with pointed claws stewing in alcohol and herbs."

Part II. Practice incorporating quoted sentences into your analysis.
3

Revise the following sentences to use proper academic style when quoting a complete sentence. Be sure to have context, a dialogue tag, AND at least one sentence of analysis after the quote. Remember, when quoting a whole sentence, you must start a new sentence after the quotation. Copy and paste the sample into the box and then edit it to reflect proper, academic style.

The author depicts her mother as relentless when it came to making her family eat whatever she had cooked. "The squid eye would keep appearing at breakfast and dinner until eaten. Sometimes brown masses sat on every dish."

3

Revise the following sentences to use proper academic style when quoting a complete sentence. Be sure to have context, a dialogue tag, AND at least one sentence of analysis after the quote. Remember, when quoting a whole sentence, you must start a new sentence after the quotation. Copy and paste the sample into the box and then edit it to reflect proper, academic style.

The author recalls feeling traumatized by her mother's story about monkey feasts. "I'd overhear before I had a chance to protect myself. Then the monkey words would unsettle me; a curtain flapped loose inside my brain."

Part III. Quoting dialogue in an analysis.
3

Revise the sentences below to properly incorporate a quotation that includes narration and dialogue. Remember, quoting a passage that includes both narration and dialogue requires you to break up the quoted text into smaller pieces!

Copy and paste the sample into the box and then edit it to reflect proper, academic style. Unlike the other examples, in this one you need to delete most of the quote in the original sentence.


Kingston describes her mother as someone obsessed with feeding her family. ""Eat! Eat!" my mother would shout at our heads bent over bowls, the blood pudding awobble in the middle of the table. She had one rule to keep us safe from toadstools and such: "If it tastes good, it's bad for you," she said. "If it tastes bad, it's good for you."" Her mother's intentions were good, but the foods she offered up were not in keeping with her children's American tastes.

Part IV. Putting it all together.
16

Write an analytic paragraph about the following question:

How does Maxine Hong Kingston appeal to the reader's senses in "Catfish in the Bathtub"?

In your response, incorporate TWO properly formatted quotations in a formal, academic style.