How do I analyse melodic features in a piece?

Analysing melody is mainly about your own perception of the piece rather than memorising a lot of facts - this is where you can bring your own input and subjective view. Firstly, you need to get to know the piece. Listen to the music and try to discern where the melody is - most often, you can hear it in the top voice, just like when you listen to a song with an accompaniment, but sometimes it appears in lower voices. Listening to the bass line can help you for example to distinguish the harmonic elements, but also notice when the higher parts simply provide harmonic accompaniment whilst the bass line dominates the piece. When you know what the melody is, try and define its shape - is it ascending or descending? Does it have many chromatic notes or ornaments? Does it move step-wise or does it have a lot of jumps? Now you can basically describe the technical element of the melody.After this, you can start thinking about expressive qualities of the melody. Is there something that the melody reminds you of? Does it sound like a song for voice, or does it have a dance rhythm? Is it virtuosic or does it sound very solemn? Later on you will learn about the use of topics in music - these are conscious references to other styles of music which use specific musical features to evoke some meaning by association with another musical style. You can comment on how the melody feels - the meaning of music is ultimately subjective, and therefore this is an opportunity for you to show that you are listening to the music very perceptively with enthusiasm, and you do not necessarily need to worry about getting the answer 'right'. I hope this explains to you generally how you can approach melodic analysis if you get a piece of music and you are told to analyse its melody.