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PARTS & SECTIONS

   Click on a title below:

Part I.
Basics/Process

  A. Chapters 1-6:
      
Starting

  B. Ch. 7-13:
       Organizing

  C. Ch. 14-20:
       Revising/Edit
ing

Part II.
College Writing

   D. Ch. 21-23:
        What Is It?

   E. Ch. 24-30:
      
 Write on Rdgs.

   F. Ch.31-35:
       Arguments

  G. Ch. 36-42:
       Research

   I.  Ch. 49-58:
       Majors & Work

Part III.
Writing to Literature

 H. Ch. 43-48:
       Literature

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 Study Questions

 

                                                  

Chapter 30. CRITICAL REVIEW

    

Introduction   Basics   Advanced   Samples   Activities

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Advanced Methods of Critical Review

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Introduction

These advanced ideas and/or applications can help you understand and use this paper's type of thinking better.  For additional information, check the chapter's Grammar Book Links in the right column. 

                    

   Other Processes in a Critical Review

Reviewing More Than One Text in Your Paper

If you are reviewing several texts, you will need to work more thoroughly in your earlier drafts to fully and effectively combine them.  If you are starting by looking for appropriate articles or books to review, first choose a subject which is recent or important in your academic or professional field; then make a quick survey of recent texts that are available on that subject and choose two or three (or more) that you understand well and would like to review.  You may start a first draft after reading all of your texts; however, it also is possible to start your first draft after reading only one or two and then adding other texts to your review as you read them.  Whichever way you start, be aware of how much extra time you will need to find the number of texts you want to review and additional sources, if any, that you will need to find in support of what you are saying.  The library and/or Internet portion of starting a longer review like this can take quite a bit of time.  

It is important to intermix and analyze multiple reviews in a rich and sophisticated manner, comparing and contrasting their ideas to each other.  The way to do this is, in the second (arguments/implications) and third (evaluations) body sections, to organize your paragraphs by ideas, not by texts, so that you can discuss multiple texts at any given place.  Here, for example, is how the body sections and paragraphing might be organized in a critical review of four essays.  Pay attention in particular to body sections 2 and 3:

Body Section 1, Summary:

  • Summary of essay A, Summary of essay B, Summary of essay C, and Summary of essay D

Body Section 2, Arguments/Implications:

  • First major idea, as found in essays A, B, and C: professional/public responses/implications

  • Second major idea, as found in essays B and C: professional/public responses/implications

  • Third major idea, as found in essays A and D: professional/public responses/implications

  • Fourth major idea, as found in essays B, C, and D: professional/public responses/implications

OR

  • Professional opinions for and against one group of arguments in essays B, C, and D

  • Professional opinions for and against another group of arguments in essays A and C

  • Public responses, for and against, to arguments in essays B, C, and D.

  • Implications of all four essays

Body Section 3, Evaluations:

  • 1st Evaluative criterion or set of criteria: evaluation of all four essays    

  • 2nd Evaluative criterion or set of criteria: evaluation of the three applicable essays    

  • 3rd Evaluative criterion or set of criteria: evaluation of the three applicable essays    

  • 4th Evaluative criterion or set of criteria: evaluation of all four essays    

Notice that in body sections 2 and 3 above, there is always discussion of at least two of the reviewed texts in any given subsection.  In this way, you offer your audience an automatic process of comparison and contrast of the texts.  As you choose the ideas or subcategories for your second and third body sections, you may find it best to select those that will apply to as many of your texts as possible.  Doing so not only provides a richer interplay of comparison among the texts but also provides wider coverage of the texts' ideas, strengths, and weaknesses.

     

Alternative Methods of Organizing

Whether you are reviewing one text or several, there is an important and common alternative to using the summary-arguments/implications-evaluations system presented above and in "The Basics."  Real critical reviews in academic and professional journals--and in magazines and newspapers--often organize, instead, by discussing a series of ideas.  In this alternative method, you simply move from major idea to major idea in the text (or in two, three, or more texts).  Within each idea section, you first summarize how the idea exists in the text; then you discuss/analyze arguments/implications; and, finally, you evaluate the use or development of that particular idea.  Your instructor may actually prefer this type of critical review, especially if you are in an intermediate or advanced undergraduate course:

Title

Introduction

First Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Second Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Third Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Fourth, Fifth, etc. Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Conclusion

Another variation of this organizational plan is to start with a section that is nothing but summary, but then to organize the rest of your sections according to ideas:

Title

Introduction

Section #1: Summary of Essays or Books

Section #2: First Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Section #3: Second Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Section #4: Third Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Section #5: Fourth Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations

Conclusion

Yet a third variation is the D.A.R.E. method.  For a description of this, see "The D.A.R.E. Method of Critical Reviewing" in "Theory" below.

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   Additional Types of Critical Reviews 

Reviewing a Job Candidate or Employee

One of the more interesting uses of the typical critical review pattern of writing and thinking is to apply it to examining the qualifications or work of a job candidate or employee.  The three-step pattern--summary, response/implication, and evaluation--can be a simple, easy method for developing, grouping, and answering questions:

Summary-Response-Evaluation

Summary:

Use complete, thorough, entirely factual description of the candidate, his/her background, etc.  These may need to be ranked or given a point value according to importance.

Responses/Implications:

Use responses inclusively (from as many people and in as many situations as possible) to the candidate on as many levels or in as many ways as possible or appropriate.  These may need to be ranked or given a point value according to importance.

Evaluations:

First, carefully develop a set of criteria that is fair, complete, and balanced for all people to whom it could be applied.  Then apply it, step step, mentioning both positives and negatives.

     
Writing a Review of Literature or of a Movie

For methods of writing about literature, see the chapters Literary Analysis and, especially, Writing a Literary Review.  Analyses and reviews of movies that tell a story should be handled using techniques in the same chapters; however, some attention also should be given to visual elements as in "Arts Review" below.  

Writing an Arts Review

An arts review is both like and unlike a critical review.  Like a critical review, an arts review should 

  1. summarize the work of art (or the overall show, highlighting especially interesting pieces), 

  2. evaluate the quality of the art (or the overall show), and 

  3. discuss implications and or probable conflicting responses from the public, educated viewers, and/or arts professionals. 

Notice that the order above is different from that of a critical review.  There is a reason for this: there are two organizational methods that appear in an arts review but not a critical review, and they tend to fit together well.  To include them, an arts review should 

  1. use the elements of art to summarize, and

  2. use these elements to evaluate the quality of the art.

It is perhaps more common in arts reviews to keep all discussions of the artistic elements together--hence the closeness or intermixing of summary and evaluation--thus placing implications or conflicting responses elsewhere.  It is even possible that implications or responses may occur first in an arts review.  This may occur because many arts reviews appear in newspapers and magazines where patterns of journalism control how they are organized.  As a result, if the reviewer considers conflicts, responses, or implications more interesting or important to his or her audience, they will be placed near the beginning of the review.

What are examples of the elements used in an arts review?  Much depends on the type of art.  However, by way of example, a few of the most basic elements are as follows:

Some Elements in the Visual Arts

Organizational Plan--the work's main plan that unites the different quadrants/sections: a radial plan, a bisected (mirror-balanced) plan, a plan with/without perspective, a modification of one of these plans, etc.  
   
Color/Shading--color schemes and/or shading schemes
   
Symbols--possible symbols and what they might symbolize
   
Tension
--conflicts and tensions of the different quadrants/sections of the work, opposing colors or lines, opposing objects/people, and/or opposing activities/symbols
   
Purpose--primary and secondary purposes or intents of the artist, conscious or unconscious, or, perhaps, some of the main ideas/feelings/beliefs that audiences throughout the centuries might get from the work because of/through all the elements above and how they help show the content.

(For an introduction to these elements, see Chapters 9-10 of the online textbook Experiencing the Humanities.)

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   Rhetorical Modes   

Also see the Rhetorical
Modes
page in the "Starting" section.

The Modes of Summary, Analysis (Implication), Argument, and Evaluation

For more details about how to find and use the modes in and for a critical review, please see "Rhetorical Modes" in the four chapters representing the four types of thinking in a critical review:

Summary

Analysis/Implication

Argument

Evaluation

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 Writing Theory for Students: Writing a Critical Review

This part briefly discusses the theories that instructors use to teach this kind of paper. 
     

The Critical Review as a Highly Specialized Writing Method

A critical review is a curious form of writing.  It is different from most writing in two important respects.  First, a critical review is, technically speaking, a journalistic form of writing.  It is not personal writing or business writing directed from one employee to another.  Rather, it appears regularly as a part of journalistic communication, showing up as a monthly magazine column, perhaps, or as a weekly newspaper, radio, or television feature.  Thus it is a form of writing meant specifically to inform readers, listeners, or viewers.  Critical reviews really did not exist until the advent of mass communication--of printing presses--and the newspaers and magazines that developed from it.  Before that time, a "critical review" was nothing more than a casual, word-of-mouth recommendation of a book, and it had no formal structure.  The second way in which a critical review is different from most writing is in its complexity and richness.  It is relatively short (almost never book length, and often as short as 500-1000 words); even so, within it are embodied a number of types of thinking ordered in a shorthand method of delivery that uses some of the finest critical thinking tools of which humans are capable.  Within a good critical review are creative and logical thinking, sharp and perceptive description, and a host of higher-order thinking skills.

As a result, a critical review is not only a rather specialized form of writing, but also a very important one.  It represents, in its own way, the summation of the best of human thought.  And, interestingly, it also represents the best, perhaps, that this entire section of WritingforCollege.org has to offer, as is discussed below.

     
The D.A.R.E. Method of Critical Reviewing

The D.A.R.E. process, which is discussed in a slightly different manner in the "Theory" part of the "Writing an Evaluation" chapter, also can be used as a taxonomy" to critically review one or more texts.  The overall value and meaning of D.A.R.E. is described in the "Evaluation" chapter, so here the discussion is confined to the use of D.A.R.E. in particular for critical reviewing.  What is D.A.R.E., and what is meant by calling it a "taxonomy"?  D.A.R.E. stands for "Description," "Analysis," "Response," and "Evaluation."  Taxonomy means (as explained in more details on the "Theory" page of the "Writing an Analysis" chapter) a classification system in which each element is a step requiring the one before it.  Thus describing D.A.R.E. as a taxonomy simply means there are four steps--description, analysis, response, and evaluation--each of which must be used in order for the entire system to work.  

D.A.R.E. is a form of critical thinking called "problem solving" because it can be applied to any problem involving a person, situation, or text.  In critical reviewing, the most important problem is "Should my audience read this text?"  The steps of D.A.R.E. are, in terms of critical reviewing, simply a development of the three steps or parts of a critical review described in this chapter in "Basics"--summary, implications/arguments, and evaluations.  D.A.R.E. uses these three basic steps, but it breaks them into four parts of steps, instead:

The Steps of D.A.R.E. in a Critical Review

D.  

Description
(Summary)

Describe/summarize the text you are reviewing and, if appropriate, the background issues or information necessary for your audience to make decisions.

A.  

Analysis
(Implications)

Analyze or "implicate" (show possible meanings of) the text according to one or more possible systems of interpretation, theories, or methods, according to your audience's needs and interests.  (For more on analyzing, see "Types of Analysis": "Biography/Culture/History," "A Specific System," and "Advanced Systems .")

R.  

Responses
(Arguments)

Offer several possible responses--arguments--from public, academic, or professional spheres of thought and influence.

E.  

Evaluations

Having collected all this data, use one or more sets of criteria to fully evaluate the text.

As noted in the chapter on evaluation, the D.A.R.E. process may be applied to much more than just texts.  It can be used to review people and problems professionally and personally, work situations, professional needs and projects, and many other elements of life and work.  It is, as explained in the evaluation chapter, a sort of summary and highest-level meaning of this whole section of the Web site, on responding to readings.  D.A.R.E. is only one system of problem solving among many that require a series of steps similar to it.  Like any good problem-solving process, D.A.R.E. is not completed unless an additional step of examining the process itself--a review, evaluation, and revision of your work--is added before the result is shared with others.  In this respect, it is much like the writing process.  If you can learn to apply D.A.R.E.--the summary of this "Responding to Readings" section of the textbook--on almost any problem in your life, you have learned perhaps the single most important lesson in critical thinking that this section has to offer.

For a discussion of the value of writing about readings in composition courses, please go to this major section's "Theory and Pedagogy for Instructors" page.

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Section E.
Responding to Reading

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Ch. 30. Critical Review:

Introduction

Basics

Advanced

Samples

Activities
                      

                    

Related Chapters:

Thinking in College

Research Writing

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 Related Links in
OnlineGrammar.org:

   3. Thinking & Reading

12. Types of Papers

14. Online Readings

16. Research Writing
  

                    

 

Updated 1 Aug. 2013

  

   

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Writing for College 
by Richard Jewell is licensed by Creative Commons under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
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Natural URL: http://www.richard.jewell.net/WforC/home.htm
1st Edition: Writing for School & Work, 1984-1998. 6th Edition: 8-1-12, rev. 8-1-13. Format rev. 11-28-21
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