Critical Reading and Writing Assignment Sheet
After you’ve read an essay, article once, use the following set of questions to guide your re-readings of the text. The question on the left-hand side will help you describe and analyze the text; the question on the right-hand side will help focus your response(s).
| Description
| Response
|
| I. Purpose
|
| Describe the author’s overall purpose (to inquire, to convince, to persuade, to negotiate or other purpose)
| Is the overall purpose clear or muddled?
|
| How did the essay or text actually affect you: did the author’s purpose succeed?
| How does the author want to affect or change the reader?
|
|
| Was the author’s actual purpose different from the stated purpose?
|
| II. Audience/Reader
|
| Who is the intended audience?
| Are you part of the intended audience?
|
| What assumptions does the author make about the reader’s knowledge or beliefs?
| Does the author talk to or talk down to the reader?
|
| From what context or point of view is the author writing?
|
|
| III. Thesis and Main Ideas
|
| What question or problem does the author address?
| Where is the thesis stated?
|
| What is the author’s thesis?
| Are the main ideas actually related to the thesis?
|
| What main ideas are related to the thesis?
| Do key passages convey a message different from the thesis?
|
| What are the key moments or key messages in the text?
| What assumptions (about the subject or about culture) does the author make?
|
|
| Are there problems or contradictions in the essay?
|
|
| What bothers or disturbs you about the essay?
|
|
| Where do you agree or disagree?
|
| IV. Organization and Evidence
|
| Where does the author preview the essay’s organization?
| Where did you clearly get the author’s signals about the essay’s organization?
|
| How does the author signal new sections of the essay?
| Where were you confused about the organization?
|
| What kinds of evidence does the author use (personal experience, descriptions, statistics, other authorities, analytical reasoning, or other).
| What evidence was most or least effective?
|
|
| Where did the author rely on assertions rather than on evidence?
|
| V. Language and Style
|
| What is the author’s tone (casual, humorous, ironic, angry, preachy, distant, academic, or other)?
| Did the tone support or distract from the author’s purpose or meaning?
|
| Are sentences and vocabulary easy, average or difficult?
| Did the sentences and vocabulary support or distract from the author’s purpose or meaning?
|
| What words, phrases, or images recur throughout the text?
| Did recurring works or images relate to or support the purpose or meaning?
|
[119] Critical Reading. Writing CSU, pp.11-13.
AN ANALYTICAL OVERVIEW
v Introduction
The length of an introduction is usually one paragraph for a journal article review and two or three paragraphs for a longer book review. Include a few opening sentences that announce the author(s) and the title, and briefly explain the topic of the text. Present the aim of the text and summarise the main finding or key argument. Conclude the introduction with a brief statement of your evaluation of the text. This can be a positive or negative evaluation or, as is usually the case, a mixed response.
v Summary
Present a summary of the key points along with a limited number of examples. You can also briefly explain the author’s purpose/intentions throughout the text and you may briefly describe how the text is organised. The summary should only make up about a third of the critical review.
v Critique
The critique should be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the strengths, weakness and notable features of the text. Remember to base your discussion on specific criteria. Good reviews also include other sources to support your evaluation (remember to reference).
You can choose how to sequence your critique. Here are some examples to get you started:
- Most important to least important conclusions you make about the text.
- If your critique is more positive than negative, then present the negative points first and the positive last.
- If your critique is more negative than positive, then present the positive points first and the negative last.
- If there are both strengths and weakness for each criterion you use, you need to decide overall what your judgement is. For example, you may want to comment on a key idea in the text and have both positive and negative comments. You could begin by stating what is good about the idea and then concede and explain how it is limited in some way. While this example shows a mixed evaluation, overall you are probably being more negative than positive.
- In long reviews, you can address each criteria you choose in a paragraph, including both negative and positive points. For very short critical reviews (one page or less) where your comments will be briefer, include a paragraph of positive aspects and another of negative.
- You can also include recommendations for how the text can be improved in terms of ideas, research approach; theories or frameworks used can also be included in the critique section.
v Conclusion & References
Conclusion
This is usually a very short paragraph.
- Restate your overall opinion of the text.
- Briefly present recommendations.
- If necessary some further qualification or explanation of your judgement can be included. This can help your critique sound fair and reasonable.
References
If you have used other sources in you review you should also include a list of references at the end of the review.
v Summarising and paraphrasing for the critical review
Summarising and paraphrasing are essential skills for academic writing and in particular, the critical review. To summarise means to reduce a text to its main points and its most important ideas. The length of your summary for a critical review should only be about one quarter to one third of the whole critical review.
The best way to summarise is to:
- Scan the text. Look for information that can be deduced from the introduction, conclusion and the title and headings. What do these tell you about the main points of the article?
- Locate the topic sentences and highlight the main points as you read.
- Reread the text and make separate notes of the main points. Examples and evidence do not need to be included at this stage. Usually they are used selectively in your critique.
Paraphrasing means putting it into your own words. Paraphrasing offers an alternative to using direct quotations in your summary (and the critique) and can be an efficient way to integrate your summary notes.
The best way to paraphrase is to:
- Review your summary notes
- Rewrite them in your own words and in complete sentences
- Use reporting verbs and phrases (e.g. The author describes…, Smith argues that …).
- If you include unique or specialist phrases from the text, use quotation marks.
[120] Structure of a Critical Review. Australia, 2014
TYPES OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
[115] UNC School of Education, 2015 
A BOOK REVIEW: A MODEL
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