Fluency is when writing is smooth and effortless in quality. When writing is fluent, it flows—making it more pleasing and persuasive.

Making analysis flow is a key target for students who want to strengthen their English work. The challenge is learning how to generate flow in analytical writing, which can seem like a mechanical exercise.

Three ways to make English analysis flow

Here are three ways to make English analysis flow, using this image of a winter brook as a starter, and a line of description generated by it:

The brook slipped and splashed over jagged stones between the bare trees.

1. Use short, embedded quotations.

🛑 = ‘The text describes how the brook ‘slipped and splashed over jagged stones between the bare trees’.’ This long quotation is transcribing the full description, not analysing it.

💧 = ‘The brook is described as it ‘slipped and splashed’, with the sibilant and plosive sounds suggesting the flowing and foaming water.’ This phrase includes a shorter quotation and also gives a technique (evidence) and an impression (explanation) to flesh out the analysis.

2. Describe the impressions generated by the language.

🛑 = ‘The writer uses the adjectives ‘jagged’ and ‘bare’ to describe the forest.’ This line is not working to explain how the forest is portrayed.

💧 = ‘The coldness of the forest is conveyed through the sharp image of ‘jagged stones’ and the raw description of the ‘bare trees’, leafless in winter.’ This analysis conveys the impressions produced by the quoted words.

3. Write in longer, complex sentences—using commas and dependent clauses.

🛑 = ‘The writer uses the words ‘over’ and ‘between’. This describes the moving water.’ These two simple sentences are choppy.

💧 = ‘The writer uses the prepositions ‘over’ and ‘between’, which evoke the movement of the water as it flows through the forest.’ This complex sentence adds the impression to the analysis, in a line with better cadence (ie. flow).

For more on writing flow, see How to Use an Em Dash to Make a Line Flow.

For more on language analysis, see:
What is Rhetorical Language?
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