Critical Review Writing: Comparison of two articles
Use the headings from ‘critical review writing’ above
If you are comparing two articles, set yourself a set of criteria, and consider each article from under each heading – try and avoid ‘telling the story’ of each article in turn. This example takes the questions above as the headings under which you compare the articles side by side. Chunk up the paragraphs by topic to discuss both articles.
Article 1 |
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Article 2 |
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Summary points:
Topic, or the main question
Why does the author think the question(s) is important?
Evaluation points: eg
- Is the question the text tries to answer relevant, interesting, new, useful?
- Who will find the text useful?
- Does the text give new answers to an old question?
- Is the text detailed, or brief? Simple or complex?
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Summary points:
The arguments
The structure of the text or the method
The evidence used to support answers.
Evaluation points eg
- How are the arguments of the two articles similar? How are they different?
- How do the methods differ? Or are similar?
- Is the evidence presented to support the answer extensive? Strong? Weak? Contradictory?
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Summary points
The conclusions reached in the text.
Are the conclusions reached final, or preliminary?
Any further questions raised
Evaluation points: eg
- Do the conclusions follow on from the rest of the article?
- What are the unanswered questions? Do you think there needs to be some more research to follow on?
- Do you think the article makes a useful contribution to knowledge in the field? Why?
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