10 Department of Education-Region III

TARLAC CITY SCHOOLS DIVISION

Juan Luna St., Sto. Cristo, Tarlac City 2300
Email address: tarlac.city@deped.gov.ph/ Tel. No. (045) 470 - 8180

English
Quarter 3: Week 3
Learning Activity Sheets

0
 ENGLISH 10

Name of Learner: _______________________________________ Grade Level: 10 Q3 – WEEK 3

Section: _______________________________________________Date: ___________________
Composing an Independent Critique of a Chosen Selection (Part I)
Background Information:
Just like speaking, writing is a productive skill which involves writing down your thoughts and
ideas from a text read, heard, or viewed that manifests understanding and comprehension. According to
Nunan (2003), writing is both a physical and mental act that leads you to discover ideas, think about how
to communicate and develop these ideas into statements and paragraphs that will be comprehensible
or understandable to your readers. He asserts that writing is a process and a product. This means that
you, as a writer, is tasked to create, plan, write various drafts, revise, edit, and, finally, publish your
output.

This is true to students like you. Many times, you will be prompted to give your insights and to
judge the effectiveness of a certain work through a written form – an essay. These works include a book,
an article, a movie, or even a live performance such as stage play or spoken poetry. Here, you are
carefully interpreting and analyzing a work’s effectiveness including what it does well and what it does
poorly.

However, writing down your opinion about a particular issue, TV series, movie or book is not
enough. As an effective writer, you need to have a sufficient knowledge on the work you will be writing
about so that you can give interpretations and conclusions that are based on evidence found on the text
or piece of work. What you need to produce is a systematic, yet a personal response and evaluation of
what you read. This process is called writing a critique.

A. What is a Critique?

Nordquist (2019) defined critique as a formal analysis and evaluation of a text, production, or
performance—either one's own (a self-critique) or someone else's. Additionally, it is a genre of academic
writing that briefly summarizes and critically evaluates a work or concept. Critiques can be used to
carefully analyze a variety of works such as: 1) creative works – novels, exhibits, film, images, poetry; 2)
research – monographs, journal articles, systematic reviews, theories; and 3) media – news reports,
feature articles (Queensland University of Technology, 2020).

To put it simply, to critique means to evaluate somebody's work (positive or negative) such a
book, an essay, a movie with the objective of increasing the reader's understanding of the specific work
under discussion.

Moreover, the writer of a critique has a responsibility to explain how they reached their critical
conclusions about the piece. Thus, statements such as “This book is fascinating” or “This movie is truly
inspirational” do not communicate much to the reader of a critique without an explanation of what is
fascinating or truly inspirational and why (University of Oklahoma, 2017).

B. Why Do We Write Critiques?

The Queensland University of Technology (2020) listed the advantages of writing a critique on a
work. It helps us to develop the following:
1. the knowledge of the work’s subject area or related works.
2. the understanding of the work’s purpose, intended audience, development of argument, structure of
evidence or creative style.
3. the recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

C. What is the Structure of a Critique?

The Queensland University of Technology and University of Oklahoma also provided a guide on
how to structure a critique. Like any typical essay, a critique uses a formal, academic writing style and
has a clear structure, that is, an introduction, body, and conclusion. However, the body of a critique

1
is composed of a summary of the work and a detailed evaluation. The purpose of an evaluation is to
gauge the usefulness or impact of a work in a particular field.
Before you start writing, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the work that will be
critiqued. Therefore, you should read or study the piece of work first.

1. Study the work under discussion.

2. Make notes on key parts of the work.
3. Develop an understanding of the main argument or purpose being expressed in the work.
4. Consider how the work relates to a broader issue or context.

A. Introduction
1. the author/creator
2. the name/title of the work
3. the author’s main point or the purpose of the work the readers’ takeaway
4. Any background information you find helpful to the readers’ understanding of the text
B. Summary
1. summary of the work or the section you are critiquing and is written objectively and briefly using
your own words
2. the summary should not be the focus of the critique and is usually shorter than the critical
evaluation
3. also states the author’s main point or purpose
4. it is written in third person point-of-view (no I, you, me, myself)
C. Critical Evaluation
This section should give a systematic and detailed assessment of the different elements of the
work, evaluating how well the creator was able to achieve the purpose through these.
For example:
You would assess the plot structure, characterization and setting of a novel; an assessment of
a painting would look at composition, brush strokes, color and light; a critique of a research project
would look at subject selection, design of the experiment, analysis of data and conclusions.
A critical evaluation does not simply highlight negative impressions. It should deconstruct the work
and identify both strengths and weaknesses. It should examine the work and evaluate its success,
considering its purpose.
Examples of key critical questions that could help your assessment include:
1. Who is the creator? Is the work presented objectively or subjectively?
2. What are the aims of the work? Were the aims achieved?
3. What techniques, styles, media were used in the work? Are they effective in portraying the
purpose?
4. What assumptions, beliefs or ideas are presented in the work? Do they affect its validity?
5. What types of evidence or persuasion are used? Has evidence been interpreted fairly?
6. How is the work structured? Does it favor a particular interpretation or point of view? Is it
effective?
7. Does the work enhance understanding of key ideas or theories? Does the work engage (or fail
to engage) with key concepts or other works in its discipline?
For shorter critiques, you may discuss the strengths of the works, and then the weaknesses.
In longer critiques, you may wish to discuss the positive and negative of each key critical question in
individual paragraphs.
To support the evaluation, provide evidence from the work itself, such as a quote or example,
and you should also cite evidence from related sources. Explain how this evidence supports your
evaluation of the work.

2
 D. Conclusion
This is usually a very brief paragraph, which includes:
1. A statement indicating the overall evaluation of the work (Is work effective and excellently
crafted? Why or why not?)
2. A summary of the key reasons identified during the critical evaluation, why this evaluation was
formed (What does the author get right or wrong in his work? What is the work’s strengths and
weaknesses?)
3. In some circumstances, recommendations for improvement on the work may be appropriate
(Is the work recommendable? Why or why not?)

Learning Competency with code:

Compose an independent critique of a chosen selection.
Directions/ Instructions
Read carefully the instructions in each exercise; then, provide or perform what is needed or asked in
each item.
Exercises/Activities
A. Analyze the following statements about writing a critique. Write CT if the statement is true;
otherwise, write XY on the space provided for.
_____ 1. A critique is a genre of academic writing that mainly summarizes a work or concept.
_____ 2. The body of the critique includes the discussion of the work’s background information.
_____ 3. As a critique writer, reading and studying the work under study is the first step prior to actual
critiquing.
_____ 4. In writing a critique, it is acceptable to include personal, biased opinions since it could be written
in the writer’s own words.
_____ 5. A critique is an evaluation essay of somebody's work whether positive or negative to increase
the reader's understanding of the work under study.

B. Recall the structure of writing a critique and fill in the graphic organizer below by giving short
description or explanation on each of the key or important parts of a critique paper.

3
C. Read Robert Fulghum’s essay, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten first
published in 1988. Then, answer the questions that follow.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Robert Fulghum

Each spring, for many years, I have set myself the task of writing a personal statement of belief:
a Credo. When I was younger, the statement ran for many pages, trying to cover every base, with no
loose ends. It sounded like a Supreme Court brief, as if words could resolve all conflicts about the
meaning of existence.

The Credo has grown shorter in recent years—sometimes cynical, sometimes comical, and
sometimes bland—but I keep working at it. Recently I set out to get the statement of personal belief down
to one page in simple terms, fully understanding the naïve idealism that implied.

The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill my old car’s tank
with super deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies—kept
sputtering out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mind and my spirit get like
that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies. I keep
sputtering out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not
enough. The examined life is no picnic.

I realized then that I already know most of what’s necessary to live a meaningful life—that it isn’t
all that complicated. I know it. And have known it for a long, long time. Living it—well, that’s another
matter, yes? Here’s my Credo:

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in
kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at
Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and
work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and
nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do
we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—
LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
4
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family
life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a
better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every
afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to
always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands
and stick together.

Source: Gabriel, Josefina P. World Literature and Communication Arts. Quezon City: St. Bernadette Publishing House Corporation,
2013., pp. 431-432.

Introduction
1. What is the essay's title?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
2. When is the essay published?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
3. Who is the intended audience of the essay?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Summary
4. What background knowledge did the author provide in the essay?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
5. What is the author's main purpose in writing? What message does he want to convey?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Critical Evaluation
6. What examples did the author give to support or elaborate his message or claim?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
7. Is the author’s claim biased? Why or why not?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
8. Is the structure of the essay easy to follow? Does the writer clearly indicate transitions between
ideas (paragraph to paragraph and sentence to sentence)? Explain briefly.
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
9. Is the author’s word choice easy to understand? Why or why not?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
10. What do you think of the author’s attitude as presented in the essay? Does he sound learned and
entertaining? Or does he sound boring and offensive? Explain briefly.
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
11. What does the writer most need to develop further? What recommendation would you give the
writer?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

5
 Conclusion
12. After reading the essay, what element in the essay most stands out in your memory? Why? Does
it stand out because it helps or hurts the essay?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
13. What personal note do you want to give to the writer that summarizes your overall view of the
essay?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
14. What suggestions you could give to improve the essay?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Reflections
What part of the lesson/activity In what activity/activities did you In what aspect of your life can
did you enjoy most? Why? experience difficulties? Why you apply the lesson? Explain.

6
References:
Almonte, Liza R., Lerma L. Flandez, Angelina Lourdes A. Hermosa, Nedia Lagustan, Liberty A.
Mangaluz, Elenita R. Miranda, Paul Anthony B. Mendoza, Lito A. Palomar, Grace B. Annette
Barradas-Soriano, and Karen B. Villanueva. Celebrating Diversity through World Literature –
Grade 10 English – Learner’s Material. Quezon City: REX Book Store, Inc., 2015.
“Critical Analysis,” Southeastern Louisiana University, Accessed January 8, 2021,
https://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/elejeune/critique.html.
Gabriel, Josefina P. World Literature and Communication Arts. Quezon City: St. Bernadette Publishing
House Corporation, 2013., pp. 431-432.
Nunan, David. Practical English Language Teaching. Singapore: McGraw-Hill Company, 2003.
"What Is a Critique in Composition?,” Thoughtco, Last modified July 01, 2019,
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-critique-composition-1689944.
“Writing a critique,” Queensland University of Technology, 2020, Accessed January 8, 2021,
https://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/write/critique.html.
“Writing a Critique,” University of Oklahoma, 2017, Accessed January 8, 2021,
https://www.ou.edu/writingcenter/guides/specialized_genres/critique.

Answer Key
A.
1. XY
2. CT
3. CT
4. XY
5. CT
B. Answers may vary.
C. Answers may vary.

Prepared by: RIA-FLOR V. VALDOZ

Teacher I

Evaluators: MARIECHRIS M. DAVID

JOEANN M. CASTRO
EUGENE S. YANGO
KAREN LOU A. CEPE
MARIA KRISTINA C. SALUDEZ

Reviewed: CARMELA T. PEREZ, EdD

EPSVR-English

LILY BETH P. MALLARI

EPSVR-LRMS

ROBERT E. OSONGCO, EdD

Chief-CID