What is a Critical Review of a Scholarly Work?
A critical review of a scholarly work (in this case one article) evaluates the strengths and
weaknesses of the item’s ideas and content.
It provides description, analysis, and interpretation so that readers can assess the source’s value.
A review is a position paper.
Take a position and be prepared to support it with evidence.
Three principal reasons for assigning reviews:
First, a review ensures that students will do the assigned reading.
Second, reviews are easy; really!
Students assigned a research paper will necessarily spend a lot of time hunting for a topic,
finding sources, and wandering down dead ends.
In contrast, if an instructor assigns a review of required reading, the students begin with a topic
and their sources, so they can spend their time reading, thinking, and writing.
Third, review essays provide practice in three of the most valuable skills offered by a liberal arts
education: the skills of critical reading, critical thinking, and critical writing.
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Before You Read the Article:
What does the title lead you to expect about the article?
Study any sub-headings to understand how the author organised the content.
Read the abstract, if there is one, for a summary of the author’s arguments.
Study the list of references to determine what research contributed to the author’s arguments.
Are the references recent?
Do they represent important work in the field?
If possible, read about the author to learn what authority she brings to the subject.
Has the author made an important contribution to the field of study?
Reading the Article: Points to Consider
Read the article carefully.
Record your impressions and note sections suitable for quoting but keep these to a minimum.
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the author’s purpose? In other words, why choose the topic at all? Possible reasons
might be to survey and summarise research on a topic; to present an argument that builds on past
research; to refute another writer’s argument, or even to offer a new interpretation.
• Does the author define important terms?
• Is the information in the article fact or opinion?
• (Facts are verifiable, while opinions arise from interpretations of facts.)
• Does the information seem well researched or is it unsupported?
• What does the author omit, exclude, or overlook? Does that weaken the article? Does this help
you understand the author’s purpose? Look at the author’s central arguments or conclusions. Are
they clearly stated? Does the evidence and analysis support them?
• Use references to the new ideas in the article to illustrate your theme.
• Is the article lacking information or argumentation that you expected to find?
• Is the article organised logically and easy to follow?
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• Does the author’s style suit the intended audience? Is the style pretentious or unnecessarily
complicated?
• Relate the work to a social or literary trend.
• Is the author’s language objective or charged with emotion and bias?
• If illustrations or charts are used, are they effective in presenting information?
Writing the Review:
The first step in a review is to summarise the article and its topic before you discuss its strengths
and weaknesses.
The key is to provide the necessary summary in as short a space as possible.
You will repeat the article author’s ideas, not your own, so this section should only be a small
part of your review.
The introduction is your reader’s guide to the rest of the review.
Make a good impression.
Treat the author and the sources with respect.
Do not make disparaging comments about your skills or qualifications as a reviewer; be
confident.
Your introduction should subtly indicate to the reader that you have a command of both the
article and the review.
The second task is to determine why the article was written.
Rather than telling the story of, say, “The Expansion of Greece” you must inform the reader why
the author wrote the article.
To keep your focus, remind yourself that your assignment is primarily to discuss the article’s
treatment of its topic, not the topic itself.
Your key sentences should therefore say something like, ‘The article shows… The author argues”
rather than ‘This happened…. This is the case.”
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Here you might ask and answer questions such as, why did the author choose this topic? Who is
her audience? What primary/secondary sources does she use? What arguments are made? Is the article
more analytical or narrative? Is it just words or are there pictures, maps too?
In short, what is the author trying to do?
Having determined the author’s goals, you now explain whether she achieved those or other
goals.
For example, if the author states in the first sentence that this “source is an attempt to re-evaluate
the reasons for Greek expansion” then your review should at some point assess her success in doing so.
However, it is also acceptable to go beyond the goals stated by the author to ask whether those
goals were appropriate to begin with.
For example, the author states that, “the supreme tragedy of the Greeks was their failure to solve
the problem of internecine political conflict.”
However, the author goes on to state that “the age did not lack for creative energy.”
You might think that if such was the case why was the situation unresolved.
Does the author address this idea?
While you do not need to like the article under review, please remember that criticism is more
than complaint.
Authors have a limited number of pages and everyone is constrained by a finite amount of time,
money, and sources.
Rather than demanding that a historian take on an additional task, you might think about what
portions of the article could have been eliminated to make room.
Before complaining that the historian focused only on one group of people, ask if other groups
left the records the historian would need to tell their stories as well.
It may help to imagine that you are giving advice to a historian about to create a work like the
one you are reviewing.
What constructive lessons can you provide?
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Prepare an Outline:
Read over your notes.
Choose a statement that expresses the central purpose or thesis of your review. Remember, this is
not simply a report.
When thinking of a thesis, consider what the author intended and whether those intentions were
successfully realised.
Eliminate all notes that do not relate to your thesis.
Organise your remaining points into separate groups such as points about structure, style, or
argument.
Devise a logical sequence for presenting these ideas. Remember that all your ideas must support
your central thesis.
Writing the First Draft:
The review should begin with a complete citation (see page one) of the source (use Chicago
Manual of Style). Check scholarly journals for examples.
A Suggestion for Structure:
The first paragraph may contain:
• a statement of your thesis
• the author’s purpose in writing the article
• comments on how the article relates to other work on the same subject
• information about the author’s reputation or authority in the field
The body of the review should:
• state your arguments in support of your thesis
• follow the logical development of ideas that you mapped out in your outline
• include quotations from the article (if appropriate) which illustrate your main ideas; again, be
brief , better still avoid quotations altogether
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The concluding paragraph may:
• summarise your review
• restate your thesis
Revise the First Draft
Ideally, you should leave your first draft for a day or two before revising.
This allows you to gain a more objective perspective on your ideas.
Check for the following when revising:
• Grammar and punctuation errors
• Organisation, logical development, and solid support of your thesis
• Errors in quotations or in references
You may make major revisions in the organisation or content of your review during the revision
process. Revising can even lead to a radical change in your central thesis.
If this sounds formulaic, it is.
Sometimes formulas have their merits.
Perhaps the best preparation for writing a critical review is to read other academic reviews.
Check out review essays published in the likes of English Historical Review or Reviews in American
History.
Through the university, you have access to many historical journals in databases such as JSTOR and
Historical Abstracts.
What to Leave Out of a Review
Usually a review does not include:
• Endnotes/footnotes
• A bibliography
• For this assignment, include endnotes if used, and a bibliography
• Long quotations from the source or other reviews
• Information about the author’s life that is not related to the theme of the review
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Reminders
• There is no definitive way to write a review. Reviews are highly personal and reflect the
opinions of the reviewer.
• Reviews can be as short as 50-100 words, or much longer (in this case 1000 words), depending
on the purpose of the review.
• Before writing the review, be sure that you understand what type of review is required for your
assignment.
• Keep your audience in mind! This will help define the emphasis you put on various parts of the
review.
The important thing to remember is that a written piece or other scholarly work is a tool with a
specific function.
To evaluate the tool, you must first understand the function.
Having done that, you must explain it to your reader and state the usefulness of the article.
Along the way, you will find yourself ripping the article apart, imagining how it could have been
written differently, seeing it from the author’s point of view, and, perhaps, comparing it to other works.
That is critical reading and critical thinking, to which you will add the skill of critical
writing!
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