How to Write a Critique
Being able to understand and evaluate somebody else’s thoughts is critical for any person, and especially for students, who are required to read a lot and to do lots of research writing. The skill to evaluate, what someone else wrote, and to structure your thoughts in a form of a written critique is the way to high grades and scholarships.
A critique is a paper that gives a critical assessment of a book or an article. “Critic” is someone, who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation ... Then, “critique” is a systematic inquiry into the conditions and consequences of a concept or set of concepts, and an attempt to understand its limitations. Therefore, when writing a critique, we should first carefully read the material and understand the author’s main points, and then write the paper: start with an introduction and the book’s main purpose, then follow with several paragraphs of critique and judgment, and then state personal opinion in the conclusion and support it with evidence.
Start out with attentively reading the book or the article you are going to critique. Don’t forget to annotate critically, you will use the notes you made as supporting details of your paper. It is a lot easier to write about an article, rather than a long book, that’s why it is useful to divide a book in parts and write short summaries for each of them. Don’t forget to find the thesis statement, author’s main points and the way he explains to them, leading to the conclusion. When you start to write, all the notes you’ve made are going to be very useful from the very beginning of your paper.
As any other paper, a critique starts with an introduction, which includes information about the book, a brief summary of what the author said and some main points of the book or article. In the first sentence of the paper include the author and the book name (also include the source, if it’s an article) to help the reader understand, what you are going to write about. Besides your thesis statement that should state briefly what the critique is about and how you intend to fulfill it, try to restate the author’s thesis statement and the main purpose of the book. After the introduction write a brief summary of the book and mention the author’s main points and how he proves them throughout the book. Now that we have summarized the piece of writing, that’s under analysis, it’s time to critique.
The body of a critique consists of several paragraphs of analysis and judgment, which answer critical questions about the author’s background, the topic of the book and its strengths and weaknesses. The main idea of this part of your paper should be whether the author addresses his main points or not and how well he proves his thoughts.
The next step is to critically review what the author wrote. Does the argument hang together? Were the methods used to gather the evidence appropriate for the author's purposes? Does the evidence cited really lead to the conclusion the author reached? Do you know of other evidence that might be used to make a counter-argument? Be sure to check the date of the article and the evidence – are the conclusions still valid?
The next step after you have answered these questions and analyzed the logic of the book, is to state your opinion about it.
A conclusion of a critique should include your general opinion of the book and whether you agree with the author or not, and why. This is the part of the paper, where you can actually state your thoughts, rather than analyze somebody else’s. Opinions are of little use unless supported by sound counter arguments. When saying if you agree with the author or not, don’t forget to explain why and to support your thoughts. Summarize your main arguments and restate your thesis to make sure that your paper is successfully completed.
Following the logic of writing a critique, you will be able to create a perfect paper step-by-step. Enjoy your reading and pursue the four main guidelines, when writing a critique:
1. attentive reading and annotating;
2. summarizing the book and understanding its main points and purpose;
3. analyzing and judging;
4. and finally saying what you think about the book and supporting your opinion.
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