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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.
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:
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Body Section 2, Arguments/Implications:
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First major idea, as found in
essays A, B, and C: professional/public responses/implications
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Second major idea, as found in
essays B and C: professional/public responses/implications
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Third major idea, as found in
essays A and D: professional/public responses/implications
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Fourth major idea, as found in
essays B, C, and D: professional/public responses/implications
OR
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Professional opinions for and
against one group of arguments in essays B, C, and D
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Professional opinions for and
against another group of arguments in essays A and C
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Public responses, for and against,
to arguments in essays B, C, and D.
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Implications of all four essays
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Body Section 3, Evaluations:
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1st Evaluative criterion or set of
criteria: evaluation of all four essays
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2nd Evaluative criterion or set of
criteria: evaluation of the three applicable essays
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3rd Evaluative criterion or set of
criteria: evaluation of the three applicable essays
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4th Evaluative criterion or set of
criteria: evaluation of all four essays
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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:
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First Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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Second Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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Third Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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Fourth, Fifth, etc. Major Idea in
Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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:
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Section #1: Summary of Essays or
Books |
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Section #2: First Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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Section #3: Second Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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Section #4: Third Major Idea in Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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Section #5: Fourth Major Idea in
Reviewed Text
Summary, Arguments/Implications, & Evaluations |
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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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
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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. |
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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. |
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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
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summarize the work of art
(or the overall show, highlighting especially interesting pieces),
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evaluate the quality of the art
(or the overall show), and
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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
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use the elements of art to
summarize, and
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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
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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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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
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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. |
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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 .") |
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R. |
Responses
(Arguments) |
Offer several possible
responses--arguments--from public, academic, or professional spheres of
thought and influence. |
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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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