Write a Critique Essay

/in /by

Write a 3 page critique of article “Hanging: The Mysterious Case of the Boy in the barn.”

For your first formal essay you are to compose a three page critique of an article, which adheres to MLA guidelines for formatting and documenting sources.

You will:

  • Introduce a text and its author to a specific audience (reader),
  • Provide a summary of the chosen text, and, most significantly,
  • Evaluate the worth of the text by analyzing the validity and effectiveness of its message and the author’s presentation of that message based on identifiable criterion.

In your critique you will form your own evaluation of the following text:

HANGING: THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE BOY IN THE BARN

Generated from your analytical reading, you will carefully choose and explicitly state the criteria you are using to evaluate the text—your evaluation criteria will form your thesis and overall focus of your essay. Because your thesis is an evaluation of a text based on criteria you’ve established, this critique will be argumentative. That is, your thesis (because it needs to be arguable) should represent your opinion on the effectiveness and validity of the text’s message or argument in meeting your established criteria, not whether you agree/disagree with the author’s views.

To begin:

  • Read the article (see above);
  • Re-read the article—pay particular attention to question one of your reading notes: The author/article’s purpose;

3. Draft a summary of your chosen article:

The purpose of composing a summary of the article (Note: if you took thorough reading notes/annotations, that is, answered each of the four questions I asked, it may be easier than writing a summary “cold”) is to ensure that you understand the article you’ll eventually evaluate.

4. Establish Criteria to structure your Critique:

From your reading analyses and summary of the article, identify the reasons you are using to form a judgment of the article—these reasons are the criteria that will structure/support your critique. To form an effective critique focus on what you consider to be the author’s purpose of the article—once you establish that, decide if you think the author was able to effectively achieve his/her purpose.