In writing up your critical essay, you will need to include the following:
•Summary of the article you are critiquing: this shows you understood it. Provide a brief overview of what the article was trying to do (i.e., the problem), methods, if relevant, and the thesis or findings. Make sure to mention the title and author’s name.
•Your critical evaluation of the article. You might address the article’s problem, methods, or findings, or all of these, offering specific support from the text itself (using paraphrase or direct quote and indicating the page number) for your observations. Below are some guiding questions to help you think of what to write: ◦Did the article ask the right question in the first place? How does it fit with other articles on the same topic? Did it miss any important studies it should have considered?
◦Did the problem match the methods? For example, to understand student behavior, were students observed or interviewed, or did all the data come from teachers?
◦Were the findings reported in a consistent and clear format? Did you notice problems in the data that the article overlooked? Did the article fail to acknowledge and explain any limitations?
◦Was the logic clear and were claims properly supported with convincing data? Did you spot any fallacies?
•Your opinion of the article. Did you agree with the thesis or believe the findings? If everything was logical, clear, and well-ordered, yet you remain skeptical, how would you explain that? Perhaps a fundamental difference in values would explain it, or perhaps you know of counter-evidence not considered by the author.
•Your estimation of the article’s contribution to knowledge and its implications or applications to our world.
