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Critical Review Essay: Recommendations on Critical Writing
Among the different types of assignments there is a type that stands separately in terms of difficulty. This type is a critical review essay. A critical review essay is an essay which main purpose is the provision of a comparative analysis of a chosen work, based on particular context.
In that regard, writing critical review essays requires more than just writing skills, through which you summarize a particular work, but also critical thinking that enables you to compare and assess the quality of such work. This article provides basic recommendations that should be kept in mind while writing critical review essays.
Recommendations
For students who were assigned to write a critical review essay for the first time, a good step will be to read several examples of critical reviews written by known authors. Although reading critical review essay samples might be fine, it is recommended to start your first hand acquaintance with published works. After finishing acquaintance, you might find the following recommendations helpful before you start writing your first review:
- Carefully choose the works which will be used as the basis for the comparison.
- Outline the criteria according to which you will assess the quality of the work. Such criteria can be identified through common elements you might find clear, interesting, original, confusing, etc.
- Clearly state to the reader the set of criteria you selected in the introduction of your critical review essay.
- Organize your paper so that the reader is aware what and where each element/criterion is discussed.
- Support each argument in your critical review essay with evidences from the work you are analyzing. Do not forget to properly reference the works you used in your paper.
- Finally, the conclusion of your critical review essay should summarize your paper, and provide a final assessment statement on the analyzed work.