WRITING CRITICAL REVIEW

MK. Teknik Penulisan Ilmiah

(TPI)
Critical Review
• Critically review another person’s writing
• Writings to be reviewed:
▫ Articles (from magazines or newspapers,
seminar papers from academic forums)
▫ Journal articles
▫ Books
Reading for University Students
• Reading plays a major part in university.
• Undergraduate students mostly uses textbooks (plus
lecture notes) as their main sources.
• Reader’s task is usually to understand main
conclusions of the text.
• Students need to refer to a number of sources
Types of Active Reading
• Browsing/ surveying
• Skimming & scanning
• Reading for general understanding of a text
• Reading for details
• Reading critically
• Reading to summarize/ take notes
• Distinguishing
▫ Deciding what texts are relevant and what are not.
Critical Reading
• Critical reading = Evaluating texts & ideas
• A Critical Reader:
▫ Understands & uses the information in texts
▫ Comments critically on those ideas & texts
▫ Evaluates or judges them
▫ Questions the information in texts
Critical Reading…2
• Review the literatures
• A literature review involves:
▫ Surveying
▫ Comparing A number of texts
▫ Evaluating
• Evaluation
• Evaluation involves:
▫ Understanding a text – content
▫ Analyzing a text – purpose, structure
Reading to Remember
• Recognition
▫ Recognize the most important points about the topic you are
investigating
• Registration
▫ Use simple techniques to remember those points – e.g.
highlighting those points
• Reinforcement
▫ Take notes if necessary
• Recall
• Retention
▫ Lock the information in your long term memory
• Retrieval
Reading Tips
• Look for the main ideas – usually located at the
beginning of the paragraphs
• Look for signposts such as:
▫ The most important…
▫ Essentially…
▫ Firstly….secondly…
• Look at the conclusion at the end of a paragraph:
▫ Finally…
▫ To conclude…
▫ In conclusion…
Reading Steps
Criteria for Evaluating Texts
A text can be evaluated on
the quality of its:
• Writing & structure
• Argumentation & use of
evidence
• Methodology
• Relevance
• Significance & contribution
to its field
Criteria for Evaluating Texts…2
• What is the aim of the writer
• Evaluate the arguments
▫ Is the arguments well supported?
▫ What is the basis of the arguments?
 Assumptions?
 Accepted belief
 Fact?
• Evaluate the evidence
▫ Is the evidence valid? Accurate?
▫ Is the evidence relevant?
• Evaluate the objectivity of the author
Types of Critical Review
• Critical review of an article/
book
• Literature review:
▫ Involves a survey, comparison, &
evaluation of a number of texts
Writing Critical Review
• What do you think about the opinions presented
on the article?
• Do you agree or disagree with the writer? Why?
In what way?
• Have you prepared yourself with sufficient
research to counter or to support the writer’s
opinions?
• Citations
▫ Endnote
▫ Footnote
Writing a Review of your chosen
article
• Introductory sentences
• Summarize the main points of the article
• Do you agree with the writer? Why?
• Do you disagree with the writer? Why?
• Make your comment on the argument
• Final evaluation
A Basic Structure
• Introduction
• Summarize the main points of the
article
• Comment critically on the text
• Conclusion
The Book Review
Structure:
1.General description of the book and or the views
of the author
2.Summary the main items discussed in the book
3.Evaluation of the overall usefulness/ importance
of the book
a) Strength & weaknesses
b) Offer solutions & alternatives
4.Conclusion : summarizes the book’s worth & its
contribution to the field of study