Writing a Critique for an article

What is an article critique?

Such an assignment that demands you to give critical reading to a research article and evaluate it as per your understanding is commonly known as an article critique. The key idea is to identify the strengths as well as weaknesses of the article. In other words, you are required to analyze the validity of arguments put forth by the author. The question that arises is how do you differentiate weak arguments from weak ones. The simple answer is critical thinking. You have to investigate each and every argument individually to find out that where the writer lacks something.

How to critique a research article?

By following the below-mentioned steps you can smoothly write an effective article critique.

1. Read the article critically

The first step is to read the article carefully to start developing its understanding. Reading it just once is obviously not a great idea as you won’t be able to understand it thoroughly. Read it several times till you understand it and clear each of your doubts. The following questions should be answered at the end of the reading exercise.

• What is the writer’s expertise in this field?
• What is the hypothesis of the writer?
• What are the arguments presented by the author?
• Are these arguments logically true?
• What is the credibility of the sources used by the author?
• Are there any logical flaws in writer’s views?
• The name of the author of the article.
• The title of the concerned article.
• Main idea of the author.
• A thesis statement which previews your critique analysis.

2. Gather evidence

Now, you need to search for the evidence on which your critique will rely. This is the most important step in the critique writing process because the authenticity of your writing will totally be dependent on this step. So extra caution is needed while collecting proofs.

Underlying is the procedure you need to adapt for this.

You need to check whether the writer is portraying some biased opinions. Often people ignore the factual results and look for evidence in the favor of their preferred argument. So this is an important check before writing a critique.

Another important task to be performed here is to check the cited sources. It is compulsory to know the credibility of all the sources mentioned in the article. So you will need to check that whether the mentioned information is present on the mentioned resources as well as the reliability of the sources.

If you are asked to critique an article of the scientific domain then you also need to question the research methodology used by the author. The following questions demand attention regarding research methodology.

3. Create an outline

Before writing the critique it is recommended to create an outline. It serves as a roadmap for your writing procedure and you are well aware of the information and sources you are going to use during the writing. It helps you to keep things neat and clean during the writing. Outline creation involves writing the subheadings and organizing the information to be used.

4. The writing process

After reading the article and then collecting all the necessary evidence, you can start writing your critique. Just like an essay or any other piece of writing you need to follow a standard structure for writing an article critique. The structure of an article critique is explained below.

Introduction

It should be one paragraph long. It introduces the reader to the article on which critique is written and the main idea of the critique. It should comprise of

Summary

Now, you need to summarize the article in your own words as per your understanding of the article. It will tell the reader that how well you have understood the concepts presented in the article. Summary of an article critique should contain

• The main idea is presented in the article.
• The main arguments of the article.
• The conclusion/results/findings of the article.

Critique

The critique of the article must be done by doing the following.

• Highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
• Write down your opinions about the article that necessarily needs to be supported by examples directly from the article.

Conclusion

It is the end part of the critique. It should contain

• A concise summary of the key points of the article
• Summary of key points of your own analysis
• Conclusion of your analysis
• Your view on the relevancy of the research done by the author
• A statement regarding the need for further research and studies in the field

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