1.Be organized. 

2.   Spend less time doing a summary, but more on your thoughts, ideas, and arguments. 

3.   What approach can you use in doing literary analysis?  Study approaches such as structuralism (look for patterns), Marxism (relation of text to society), reader response, feminist thought, deconstruction (what are the gaps and fizzures in the text, what is it really about?) , etc. 

4.  Focus on details. For example, discuss a particular character or scene in a story, or an image in a poem. 

5.  Consider doing an intertextual analysis. For example, you can compare the texts/s in class to a photograph you saw, a film you watched or another text from another culture.