Speaking is an essential skill in our daily life and finding thought-provoking quotes by famous people can master it for sure.

First, pay attention to the person who said it. It would be good to mention some facts about their path of life, for instance, time, interests, and occupation. It might occur you know nothing about them, instead of panicking, do some research and choose the most important things. Imagine, you are going to analyze a quotation by Benjamin Franklin. The name sounds familiar to you, the rest is a blank sheet. After you had researched on the net, you found out that he was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, lived in the 18th century and had a variety of interests and occupations like a leading writer, printer, political philosopher and a politician.

Second, find the keywords in their quotation and consider the main idea. Don’t forget to compare the time they lived in with the recent one because it will help you conclude whether this quotation is a problem of the present-day or not. Let’s take, for example, the following quote: “Love your enemies, for they tell you your Faults.” What are the keywords here? Yes, they are ‘love’, ‘enemies’, ‘tell’, ‘faults’. Is the quotation a problem of the present-day? Yes, it is.

Third, it’s time to acquaint the listener with your viewpoint saying whether you agree or disagree with them and why. Remember that there is no wrong or right but just your point of view which you need to defend with arguments, examples, and justifications. How many films about CSI have you seen? What do crime scene investigators do? They collect physical evidence from crime scenes, analyse them and hand in their reports to the court. In your analysis the keywords from an author’s quote are your physical evidence, you analyse them and it’s a must to answer the questions ‘why’ or ‘why not’ because this is your proof.

Now let’s get some practice. Model Analysis of a Quotation.