Skill-Building Activity: Article Evaluation
Part of writing an effective analytical research paper (like the one eventually due in week 7) involves using evidence not only from the literature (primary sources) but from the works of professional academic research (secondary sources). Therefore, you will need to be able to properly locate, analyze, and evaluate scholarly sources. This activity will help you build these research skills.
Prepping for your Article Evaluation:
For this assignment, choose a scholarly critical article from one of the GMC Library databases that makes a clear argument about any one of the stories you’ve read for class so far (weeks 1-3).
The article you choose must provide more than basic biographical information and plot summary alone; it must make an opinionated argument about some aspect of the literary work you’ve read for class.
It must be an article that is literary in nature about your chosen story.
AVOID: do not use encyclopedic, biographical, or story overviews/summary write-ups, even if they are found in the databases. My recommendation is that you avoid Bloom’s Database when looking for an article, as most students who use that database incorrectly use overview sources.
Instead, I RECOMMEND you look in EBSCOHost, ProQuest, and/or JSTOR. If you would like me to look over your article to make sure it meets requirements, I am happy to do that–email me your article’s complete MLA citation and/or attach a PDF of the article by Thursday, 06/20.
Writing your Article Evaluation:
FIRST, start your evaluation by introducing the article by title and article author by name. Be sure to format the title of the article correctly; journal article titles are presented in quotation marks. Then, summarize the article’s overall argument/thesis and main points (should be no longer than 150 words).
THEN, analyze and evaluate your article’s argument and effectiveness. Using the following questions to guide your analysis can be helpful:
ANALYZE the article author’s argument.
Helpful questions to consider:
What is he or she trying to say about the literary material?
Does the author provide textual evidence from the story or other research? If so, is this effective or not?
What new point or idea is the author trying to introduce about the literature?
Finally, EVALUATE the article author’s argument.
Helpful questions to consider:
Is the author’s argument interesting and/or logical?
Did you agree with the author’s ideas in the article? Why/why not?
What does the author do (or not do) that helps to convince readers of his or her viewpoints?
Is the author using a particular literary theory to analyze the story? If yes, which one and is this effective?
Would you have used that literary theory in your own analysis of the text? Why or why not?
Analysis/Evaluation section should be at least 200 words and include evidence from the article related to your points in order to support your position.
Your complete summary/evaluation should be at least 350 (and up to 550) words in length and fully address all requirements.
For help with GMC Library navigation, view the “How to Navigate the GMC Library” resource in this week’s Online Learning Resources.
Structure:
Begin your evaluation by introducing the author of the article and the title of the article, both by name and using correct punctuation/formatting.
Then, clearly identify and summarize the author’s thesis/argument and main points of support in a brief summary of the article.
From there, you will then provide an evaluation of these main points and explain how this article’s argument is relevant or convincing to you (or not), and why.
Be sure to use textual evidence from the article itself to support your ideas.
MLA Style:
Your paper must be formatted according to MLA format (this includes having a header, double spacing, etc.)
All quotations and paraphrases must be cited using MLA style.
Include in this analysis both: ONE SHORT QUOTE and ONE PARAPHRASE from the article, with appropriate in-text/parenthetical citations and signal phrase usage.
NO BLOCK/LONG QUOTES (MEANING, QUOTES SHOULD BE 3 LINES OR LESS).
Include a works cited page that cites your chosen article only.
For more information about MLA style, review the “How-To Guide: MLA Formatting and Citations” page linked in class.
Mechanics:
All written assignments should be mechanically and grammatically correct with proper punctuation.
For more information on each of these, you should view the Purdue OWL’s General Writing Resources
