ARELLANO UNIVERSITY

Senior High School Department

Reading and Writing
Fourth Quarter

Name/s: Aina Margaret C. Celino

Section: 11 – HUMSS 1
DLP 1: Writing a Book Review

Direction: Analyze the following text very carefully. Then, complete the table that follows.

This paper purports to assess the linguistic complexity of students’ narratives and reading texts.
However, the authors never stated the purpose behind the study. The authors provide no motivations and goals
for the study, no research questions, no strong methodological practices, and very few findings that can be
easily interpreted. While reading the study, every new sentence is surprise. There are no details and the entire
paper is completely under referenced.

Below I will discuss some of the major problems with the paper. First, the authors never provide a
rationale for their study. They never give a reason as to why they are studying reading and writing together and
they fail to link the two skills. The authors assume that the reader knows the narrative and made no attempt to
assist them in developing the narrative of the paper. Another major problem with the paper is the naiveté that is
apparent in the literature review, the methods, and the analysis. The literature review is perhaps two pages long
and boost up on their knowledge of L2 writing and reading theory before they submit a paper to a professional
journal.

It is interesting that the language background of the participants is never made explicit (participants are
at the mid beginners to high beginners’ level in using English is a second language). The extent to which any
results found in the study would be widely generalizable to what is typically conceived as an EFL/ESL learner
is not clear. Moreover, the author continually draws on literature meant for an L1 acquisition audience and
therefore of dubious extension to L2 contexts.

The methods section contains no details at all. Ten participants per grade level, in a stratified random
sample, hardly seemed enough to get much stable data. Since, there are only ten participants per grade level on
both accredited and non-accredited schools due to logistical constraints; the paper is more on exploratory study.
In other words, it seems a stretch to ask most journal readers to generalize from such a limited sample from
such a specific population. The authors state that “pupils were not given limits as to time and number of words,
for them to be relaxed in their narrative production” (p.5). However, later the authors explain that those written
data also form the basis of the corpus used for analysis. How does this differential production affect the results
of the analysis? Surely, a participant who produces 1,000 words will have different results from one who
produce 500. It is not clear how the authors can assert any sort of pattern from linguistic ‘snapshot’ from just 10
students per school, producing such heterogeneous data samples. Again, from such a modest sample size.

In general, the paper is hard to read. This likely goes back to the lack of research problems. There are
few transitions and, organizationally, the paper does not set up any expectations for the reader. The first
paragraph is a great example because it contains a single sentence and at least five different clauses. The final
paragraph in the introduction (right before the methods sections) is another example. I have read that paragraph
four times and am not sure how to process it.

There are major problems with this paper, but I do not have a time or the energy to discuss them all. The
authors really need to rethink the purpose of the collected data and educate themselves in the field of L2 reading
and writing. I would highly suggest that the authors reread issues of the journal of Second Language Writing
and Reading in a Foreign Language.
Source:http://www.uwlux.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Deparments/Political_Science_and_Public_Admin/jour:n
al_article_critique_example.pdf
TYPE OF DOCUMENT: BOOK REVIEW

PURPOSE OF THE
REVIEW:

Provides a range of strategies for moving beyond this stage and for getting the cycles of learning and
development turning again.

Reviewing can help to clarify, achieve, measure and celebrate objectives. People may be in the habit
of reviewing experiences from their normal perspective.

WRITER’S PERSONA:

This author is very strict with students but there are students who are fast learners and can get
quickly there are beginners who are just starting so there are students who don't really get how to
learn English that’s why do we have a book review to be able to prepare the student

INTENDED READER:

The extent to which any results found in the study would be widely generalizable to what is typically
conceived as an EFL/ESL learner is not clear.

STRENGTHS:

It is interesting that the language background of the participants is never made explicit (participants
are at the mid beginners to high beginners’ level in using English is a second language).

WEAKNESS:

In general, the paper is hard to read. This likely goes back to the lack of research problems. There
are few transitions and, organizationally, the paper does not set up any expectations for the reader..