When Your Teen’s Essay Gets the Comment “Needs More Analysis”

Your teen read the assignment, found quotations to support their argument, and spent hours writing. Then the essay came back with a familiar comment: “Needs more analysis.”

When you ask what they need to change, they may tell you, “I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.”

That frustration makes sense. A student can understand the reading and choose relevant evidence but still struggle to explain how that evidence supports their point. They may see the connection clearly. The challenge is helping their reader see it, too.

Why Students Get Stuck

Students often learn that a strong essay needs evidence. They find a quotation and follow it with a sentence explaining what it says. But that explanation may repeat the quotation in different words.

From the student’s perspective, they’ve done what they were asked to do: make a point, include evidence, and explain it. Being told to “say more” can leave them adding sentences without knowing what those sentences need to accomplish.

Analysis asks them to examine the evidence and explain what they make of it. Which details matter? What do those details suggest? How do they support the argument?

These are questions students can learn to work through.

Ask the Question, “So what?”

Two concepts I lean on in teaching writing are “They Say / I Say” and asking the question, “So what?”

They Say / I Say, a book by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, presents academic writing as a conversation. Students explain an idea they’ve encountered in their reading—the “they say”—and develop their own response—the “I say.”

Asking “So what?” helps them take that response further: What does this help you establish about the point you’re making?

For example, a student writing about required community service might observe that completing volunteer hours doesn’t necessarily mean someone has understood the needs their work addresses.

So what? What does that distinction mean for whether schools should require service? The student might argue that a service requirement should include opportunities to reflect on whom the work benefits and why it matters. Now the observation has a purpose in the argument.

Answering “So what?” is often the hardest part. It requires students to think critically about what the evidence means and explain why it matters. Making that connection is one of the most valuable ways they can prepare for college writing, where they’ll be expected to develop and support their own thinking in response to what they read.

Making the next step manageable

When a student is stuck, I want to understand where the difficulty begins.

Sometimes they’re trying to cover too much in one paragraph. Looking closely at a smaller piece of evidence gives them room to develop an idea. Sometimes they can explain their thinking aloud but haven’t included that explanation in the draft. Other times, they’ve made a thoughtful observation and need to connect it to the point of the essay.

Once we understand where the student is getting stuck, we can give them something specific to work on. “Needs more analysis” becomes useful when students understand what, specifically, they need to work on.

With practice, they can begin to recognize those moments themselves: where they’ve repeated a source, where readers need more explanation, and where asking “So what?” can help them figure out what to say next.