Reviews have become increasingly popular with the boom in ecommerce and how easy they are to access. Most of us see reviews almost every day whether we are buying a product online or just watching a social media influencer video sponsored by a company.
However, critical reviews are a little bit different and much more academic in nature.
They require extensive research and are often written to highlight the strengths, complexities, and shortcomings of the piece of work being reviewed.
Guide to Writing Critical Review Assignments
Plan It Out
This might go without saying but you need to be able to think critically in order to write a critical review. You need to be able to pick apart an argument and get to the bottom of it and this requires sharp thinking skills.
To think critically is to allow your brain to digest an argument and start the evaluation process of the argument. The big kicker is that you need time to be able to make succinct arguments without writing in a rush.
If you are confident in your writing skills and you know that you will get the work done once you have an argument ready then you can better plan and organize your critical review assignment while juggling other homework.
Take the time to think about what approach you would ideally like to take based on your initial instinct and what backup way would you go if it did not work out.
For example, if you’re writing a book review, you should take this time to ask yourself whether you will be taking a thematic approach where you talk about each theme in the book you want to discuss or maybe a chronological approach based on how events occur in the book being reviewed.
The same goes for your judgment too. If your review is overall one that critiques the work rather than praises it, you need to figure out the order in which you will present these negative comments in relation to your positive ones.
Check Your Biases
Many writers think of critical reviews as merely a judgment of the work being evaluated. However, this does not mean that there is any room for bias.
Even though there is plenty of judgment involved in the evaluation process, almost everything needs to be presented in a clear argumentative format.
You need to be able to justify every evaluation being made either by quoting credible research in the field or by providing enough information to invoke a sense of doubt.
Simply saying that you “feel” something about the work being reviewed will only hurt your credibility and deter the audience from seeing your point.
Express Your Baseline
One of the main reasons the audience is reading your review is to understand if the work being evaluated is good at what it claims to do and see what it does not do well. The reader of the review also comes into it with some opinions of their own so they need to know if they can agree with your review or not.
If you state that something is a limitation or a shortcoming of the evaluated work then you should be able to provide a piece of work that does not fail your evaluation as a comparison.
Readers need to know what you are comparing something to in order to see how that limitation affects the overall impact of the work and how it could be improved.
Make Clear Arguments
Some of the best reviews are those that take time to clearly explain their position or the thesis of their review right off the bat.
After all, readers are looking for what value they can get from reading your review, so it is best to let them know what they can expect.
Another thing to keep in mind is that your review can express your overall opinion on a piece of work without going into detail about every single thing that leads you to form that opinion.
For example, you might hate the way a character is portrayed in a book but you don’t need to cite every single time they were treated unfairly. Choosing the amount of evidence to cite is directly dependent on the importance of its effect on your opinion.
Moreover, you can love a lot of things about a piece of work and only choose to do a deep dive into one or two as they’re more relevant to your review and the overall impression of the work.
Writing in this way is usually harder for some people which is why it is best to hire Writers Per Hour for assistance when you’re attempting a critical review assignment for the first time.
Set The Stage
It is important to keep in mind that many people who will read your review are probably looking for an opinion to decide whether they should also spend their time on the evaluated work.
For example, you cannot write a review of a historical book without stating the period it was set in, written in, and what could have influenced the author at the time. You need to do justice to the book before you start to pick on the failures so that readers can understand the frame of reference of an argument.
Not only does describing the setting help the readers understand your argument better but it also helps those who are reading your review without any prior information about the evaluated work.
For instance, no one would benefit from your review of a book on racism if they did not know what the book is about since the theme may not be clear from the title.
Hence, informing the reader is an extremely important part of any critical review.
Guide to Writing Critical Review: Conclusion
Finally, writing a critical review can be rather enjoyable if the piece of work you choose to evaluate is something you are passionate about and informed about.
Therefore, choosing the right work is equally as important.
As you accomplish your assignment, keep in mind the above tips and you are guaranteed a great writing experience.
