Category: itf post

Critical review papers: some tips & strategies

Note: this post draws extensively from the book Writing Analytically (5th ed., 2009) by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen. Sections of the book have been included as PDFs for students to download. 

The term “critical review” or “critical response paper” sometimes causes confusion for students because, on the one hand, it seems to suggest that they only need to give their opinion, which is often expressed in terms of binaries such as like/dislike, helpful/not helpful, etc. As a result, students’ responses tend to offer a thesis like “This was a very helpful text because _____” followed by a summary of the argument. Too often, especially when written at last minute, response papers following a similar format don’t engage the reader, the material and probably the writer, too. Or, as the book Writing Analytically puts it:

Summaries that are just lists tend to dollop out the information monotonously. They omit the thinking that the piece is doing—the ways it is connecting the information, the contexts it establishes, and the implicit slant or point of view

Source: Writing Analytically 96.

In other words, the summary-as-response doesn’t demonstrate your engagement with the material, demonstrate critical thinking or the ability to make connections to other themes, ideas, and modes of thinking. The benefits of a strong response paper occur on a few different levels. First, writing a response paper allows you to process the material, assimilating new information with what you’ve already know. Second, a strong response paper reveals to your ability to think critically about the material. The processes required to critically read and write develop your overall abilities to connect new information to the themes, topics, and modes of thinking – a valuable skill both in class and outside of it. 

Perhaps most important about the process of writing a critical response is building the foundation for your own research and ideas for the research assignment or other long-term projects. Generally speaking, the learning process at the beginning of a semester is characterized by internalizing and assimilating the course materials, themes, and methods. By the mid-point of the semester, however, the learning process emphasizes generating your own ideas and arguments using the information, methods, and examples covered by the course material. 

To help you write your response papers, here are three general guidelines: 

  1. Reframe your approach to the topic: analyze rather than merely summarize or offer a personal opinion.
  2. Understand the argument: identify its main components and put the argument into context.
  3. Make connections: briefly summarize the author’s argument then focus on a few key ideas/topics of the article or text and connect the article to the broader themes, aims, or topics of the course.

Guideline #1: Before you begin anything, reframe your approach.

Writing Analytically asserts that the first step to writing a strong response paper is to reframe the task as a form of analysis (page 4):

In analytical writing, your reasoning may derive from your personal experience, but it is your reasoning and not you or your experiences that matter. Analysis asks not just “What do I think?” but “How good is my thinking? How well does it fit the subject I am trying to explain?”

The authors go on to relate analysis to perception, the way that a person makes sense of the world (12):

More than just a set of skills, analysis is a frame of mind, an attitude toward experience. It is a form of detective work that typically pursues something puzzling, something you are seeking to understand rather than something you are already sure you have the answers to. Analysis finds questions where there seemed not to be any, and it makes connections that might not have been evident at first.

“Reframing your approach” as a guideline means that, from reading the text(s) to writing the critical review, your goal is to engage with the main ideas of the text(s) while connecting those ideas to other themes and topics of the course. It’s easy to get deeply invested in a specific set of texts so it’s always a good idea to take a moment to review class notes and/or the syllabus to discover connections between a given topic and a broader theme of the course. A weekly topic might be “the urban village” while a broader theme might be “the ability to live and shape a city is a matter of rights.”

Download: Chapter 1, “Analysis: What it Is and What It Does,” and Chapter 5, “Analyzing Arguments” in Writing Analytically. 

Guideline #2: Understand the argument to move from summary to paraphrasing to analysis.

As you read the text, note any section headings, graphics or images, bolded words, or repeated phrases. After reading the text, the next step is to identify the key components of the argument and starting putting the argument into context:

  • Identify the thesis statement. What does the author want you to believe and why? What’s at stake if you do or don’t believe the author?
  • Locate the evidence the author uses to support the thesis statement. What types of evidence does the author use and how was it collected?
  • What reasons are given to connect the evidence to the thesis statement? Example: If the article is about reproduction habits of mammals and the evidence used are gestation rates of animals, then any logic that relies on reproductive habits of reptiles probably isn’t helpful!
  • What is the author’s conclusion? Does the evidence support the conclusion?
  • Does the author seem to be responding to a specific idea, person, or book? Or is the author responding more generally to a set of behaviors or practices standard to the field? Are they questioning accepted protocol or knowledge within the community?
  • What are the article’s weaknesses? Is it organization, lack of evidence, unconvincing rationale, methodology, etc.?
  • Does the author include any kind of historical context for their subject or research question? Why is this history important to the overall argument?
  • Who is the audience for this text? Was this written for a specialized or general audience? How can you tell?
  • How was the text or article organized? Describe the progression of ideas, evidence, and when applicable, visual or graphic components.
  • Check the sources: are any journals or people quoted repeatedly? What kinds of sources are listed in the bibliography? Are these sources essential to the author’s argument?

The above questions don’t just ask you for facts or info from the text itself (essentially, asking you to repeat the argument). Instead these questions offer you a starting point to put the author’s argument into context – the context of the course, in relation to previous readings, to the Planning the Future of New York curriculum at Macaulay, or even more broadly, to the history of urban policy and planning in New York. This type of thinking does require you to make judgment calls such as determining what information is or isn’t essential to the main argument. However you are ultimately relying on your understanding of the text to arrive at your conclusion. If you can do this, then you’re well on your way to writing a stronger response paper.

One essential strategy: paraphrasing. Paraphrasing means replacing the author’s original words with different ones: think about the Nike motto, “Just do it.” Of the top of my head, three paraphrases of “just do it” might be “go now,” “get it done, and “stop thinking and start doing” (that last one belongs to Home Depot!). This is a version of the exercise Paraphrase x3 that I learned from the book Writing Analytically, and I think it’s an invaluable exercise for students at any stage of their education. Paraphrase x3 deepens your understanding of a text to uncover implicit or associated meanings; furthermore, paraphrasing helps you avoid plagiarism. (You should always credit the source that you paraphrased, however!)

Download: “Paraphrase x3” in Writing Analytically, p. 33-35.

Guideline #3: Make connections between the text(s) and the class topics and themes.

Even though you’re responding to the author’s ideas, your response paper will also put forth your ideas, too. In other words: what and how you analyze or respond to a text (or work of art, set of data, etc.) will convey what and how you think. Subsequently, when writing the analytical response paper, you’re demonstrating the following: your understanding of the information and ideas, your ability to discern or highlight significant points, and your ability to explain not just what the points are but how and why. As you might have noticed, analysis demands more than simply relaying “what” to your audience; analysis demands that you explain the how and why as well.

All of this will be evident to your professor based on the quality of your summary, your ability to distinguish the author’s ideas from your own, and the connections you make between the text and broader themes of the class. In general, an analytical response paper contains some kind of thesis-like sentence that indicates the subject of your response, a brief and accurate summary of the argument, and then elaborate on some significant points; depending on the specific requirements for the assignment, a response paper is usually 2-4 pages.

Download: “How to Read a Book” by Paul N. Edwards

Writing in the Sciences: Some Resources

When a subject intimidates a student, the student may rely on sources to say ideas for them (the block quote!), or rely on jargon in order to “conform” to the expectations of the subject, or even neglect to explain abstract ideas using concrete examples. Think of our discussions early n the semester like “what is science?”; how could we have discussed the abstract idea of “science” without the writings (serving as concrete examples) provided by Prof. Wilson?

Therefore, this page builds on the concepts and resources found on the Annotated Bibliography Resources page by focusing specifically on writing in the sciences. While writing an annotated bibliography ultimately depends on your ability to read and understand a source, writing in the sciences generally cleaves to the same principles of good writing in general. I believe in the relationship between being a strong reader and being a strong writer; most importantly, these skills can be improved upon no matter the age of the person or the phase of your education or career.

How to use this page

This page is not a “guide to writing for the sciences.” it is a carefully chosen set of sources aimed towards writing in the sciences. Because good writing “shows” rather than “tells,” I’ve embedded PDFs into these pages rather than summarize the sources for you; moreover, I encourage you to determine whether or not these sources will help you and if so, whether or not to find them yourself.

After looking over these sources (and the ones at the Annotated Bibliography page – there is some overlap), a very productive activity for students is to make an appointment with me during office hours and bring examples or a source that you’re reading or something that you’re writing. Together, we can discuss some of the concepts or suggestions from the sources below, or I can guide you through the activities suggested in any of the sources from this page or the Annotated Bibliography Resources page. Because of my lack of famliarity with the methods of scientific research or conventions of the discipline, I’m hesitant to edit or “look over” any work to offer constructive feedback. Working together on how to read a source or coaching you through an exercise would be more useful for both of us – I inevitably learn from students and studetns become empowered as self-learners.

Videos

  • Kristin Sainani’s online course “Writing in the Sciences” contains over 50 videos dedicated to writing in the sciences: Website | Youtube

Joshua Schimel, Writing Science

Embedded below are two PDFs with excerpts from Joshua Schimel’s book, Writing Science. The first PDF includes exercises that you can apply to your own writing and the second PDF contains his personal recommendations for writing resources. I personally can vouch for his recommendation of Style: Towards Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams, which is applicable to any discipline and, with practice, will improve your writing no matter if a cover letter, informal email, or a formal academic paper.

[gview file=”http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wilson2016/files/2016/10/Schimel-J_Writing-in-Science_Ch-2-exercises.pdf”]

[gview file=”http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wilson2016/files/2016/10/Schimel-J_Appendix-B-Writing-Resources.pdf”]

 

Helen Sword, Stylish Academic Writing

Prof. Helen Sword at the University of Auckland wrote Stylish Academic Writing with the intention to give scholars tips on how to improve their writing rather than focus on why so much academic writing is … well, bad. In her introduction, she explains the various parts of her process: first, she surveyed seventy colleagues about the writers in their field who they considered “stylish.” In her second phase, she analyzed books and articles by more than 100 authors recommended to her by colleagues. Her third stage included assembling data:

I assembled a data set of one thousand academic articles from across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities; one hundred articles each from international journals in the fields of medicine, evolutionary biology, computer science, higher education, psychology, anthropology, law, philosophy, history and literary studies … I used them not only to locate real-life examples of both engaging and appalling academic prose but also to drill down into specific questions about style and the status quo. For example, how many articles in each discipline contain personal pronouns (I or we)? (Sword, Stylish Academic Writing, 9)

 

The usefulness of Sword’s explanation of method and the above quote is two-fold: first, it explains her research process; second, I like the way she explains the relationship between her data and the results – namely, the tips, exercises, recommendations, and examples – for scholars to learn how to improve. In other words, Sword’s introduction performs precisely what you’re being asked to do in Science Forward: begin with a tentative research topic, gather original data, and then use the data to provide insight into her original topic.

Her chapter about her method, “On Being Disciplined” demonstrates how her data upended or confirmed her original hypothesis, academic writing is shaped by convention rather than the discipline itself (Sword 20). As an evolutionary biologist, Prof. Wilson might be interested in this part of the chapter:

 

For example, I had anticipated that the science journals in my sample would all be highly prescriptive tolerating very little variance in structure, titling, or other points of style. This expectation proved true for medicine, a field in which researchers tend to work in large teams publish their findings in a standardized template. In evolutionary biology and computer science, however, I found considerable more expressive diversity. Ten percent of the evolutionary biologists in y sample opted for a unique or hybrid structure in a field where the standard Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) structure predominates … at least eleven percent of of the evolutionary biologists include one “engaging” element in their titles, such as a quote, a pun, or a question (Sword 18).

 

Her book includes “Spotlight” pages that highlight the accomplishments and writing of scholars in various fields in order to dispel the myth that there’s a mutually exclusionary relationship between being an engaging writer and being a strong scholar. Below is her spotlight on the physicist Nathaniel David Mermin:

[gview file=”http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wilson2016/files/2016/10/Sword-Helen_Spotlight.pdf”]

The turning point and the importance of context

A few weeks in class, Prof. Natov shared an anecdote from her childhood. “I was ten years old and I realized my cousins were seven years old,” she said. “And I thought to myself, ‘they’re getting so old! And I was only ten!” This anecdote set up the classroom discussion about turning points. For Prof. Natov, viewing her cousins in a different light due to their age sets up “before” and “after” moments in her anecdote, the “before” implying that she had seen her cousins as much younger and the “after” in the realization that she, too, was getting older, and maybe even realizing that she was saying something that adults had to said to her at one point! Everyone in the class named three turning points in their life, and then Prof. Natov asked us two important questions: why were some moments turning points? Which moments did you want to know more about?

Ultimately her questions pointed to a larger lesson: the importance of creating context for your audience through the use of specific examples and details. These details and examples create a richer experience for your audience and, when a turning point occurs, creates the impact of such a moment. 

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Link round-up: how does science & scientific thinking intersect with other disciplines?

This post aggregates links around some of the ideas and issues that have been discussed in class the past few weeks as well as some articles the intersections between science and other disciplines.

Art and Science

Art21 "Ecology" episode with a view of Mark Dion's installation titled Neukom Vivarium
Art21 “Ecology” episode with a view of Mark Dion’s installation Neukom Vivarium (2006)

Science & other industries and disciplines

Critical Thinking, Intelligence, and the Nature of Knowledge

 

Part II: Writing About Dance – Developing Your Skills of Observation

Note: Before proceeding, it’s strongly suggested that students read the posts “Memory Makes the Best Artist” and “Part I: Writing About Dance – General Guidelines.” 

This activity combines several short exercises: two that were introduced in the previous post “Memory Makes the Best Artist” called “Notice and Focus” and “10 on 1,” and a parts of a new exercise called “The Method,” all of which were adapted from the book Writing Analytically (5th ed.) by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen. These activities develop the tools of observation and analysis that are critical to analyzing works of art. With practice, students benefit by expanding the tools (strategies) in their tool box (range of skills) that will help them in any course, subject, or discipline.

Keep reading for instructions and the relevant pages from Writing Analytically. 

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science & science fiction

Science in the news

Science in entertainment

Science satire

Prof. Natov: “Memory makes the best artist.”

During our last class, Prof. Natov asked the class to freewrite in response to a quote and/or her prompt, a time when you were disturbed at work. After people shared their work, she asked “what details from other people’s stories do you remember?” The details that people remembered ranged from descriptions (cold metal contraption) to colors (red/yellow) and even direct quotes – all from quickly-written stories told to the class. Prof. Natov’s statement from that afternoon, “Memory makes the best artist,” draws attention to the impact made by including specific details. To your audience, these specific details allow them to “see” what you saw or “hear” what someone said to you a long time ago – some details add texture, literally (fuzzy, soft, hard, sharp) and metaphorically in that the story takes on new layers as the audience shifts from their own perspective to yours.

(Similarly, the Brooklyn-based comedian John Hodgeman says “Specificity is the soul of narrative” in pretty much every episode of his podcast “Judge John Hodgman.” His podcast consists of two people presenting their side of a mutual conflict – about everyday things like furniture choices, whether or not to buy riding lawn mowers, etc. – to John Hodgman and he issues a ruling about what they can do to solve their conflict. As the guests tell their side of the story, they are very vague and he always interrupts to say fondly but sternly “SPECIFICITY IS THE SOUL OF NARRATIVE” so he can better understand them. It is VERY FUNNY so click here to listen: Judge John Hodgman)

Because we’ll be writing a lot this semester about ourselves and our responses to works of art viewed this semester, I thought that I’d share two activities from the book Writing Analytically by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen (5th edition, 2009), which are called Notice and Focus and 10 on 1. The activities are easy to do (and remember) and hopefully they will help you with your work in the class.

Read the rest of this post for some brief descriptions of the activities as well as an embedded PDF of the relevant pages in Writing Analytically.

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Link round-up: scientific knowledge & the general public

Some links to articles that relate to the topics covered in the first day of class:

Slate in particular has several pieces related to scientific literacy and the problems facing both the general public and scientists:

 

Images Used for the Site & Scientific Literacy

Below are some excerpts from the descriptions of the original pictures that, depending on the eportfolio theme, show up as the site header and logo. I picked these images for their relatively simple compositions that wouldn’t compete with any text. For example, each work has a repeating single geometric shape (square, circle) and limited color palette, which creates the appearance of negative space when text is placed on it and therefore won’t be too busy for most screens.

When looking for pictures to use, I checked two places, Bing Homepage Gallery and NASA. Every day, each site showcases a high-res photograph of nature, science and tech, or architecture, and often makes the work available for download. I also like the descriptions used for the images – each site or space is very specific location, graphic, or with the case of NASA, taken with unusual equipment – meaning that most of the photos require some kind of explanation.

While these might simply be understood as a caption or description of what the pictures depict, it might be useful to think about these descriptions as an example of science journalism. What kind of scientific literacy is required for someone to understand these descriptions? Are these good examples of writing for a general audience? What could be improved? Read on to see the full-sized images and their descriptions!

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Paris is Burning, Social Explorer, and tracking changes to the neighborhood: 1990 vs. 2014

My previous post mentioned the documentary Paris is Burning, which filmed drag balls taking place at the Elk’s Lodge at 160 W. 129th Street. Here is a description of the Elk’s Lodge from NY Mag’s 2009 Summer Guide:

Imperial Lodge of Elks (160 W. 129th St.)
Home to the drag balls that evolved into the competing drag “houses” portrayed in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, which was mostly filmed here. Balls were held late at night because the rent was cheaper and drag queens were safer than on Harlem streets, where black-nationalist militancy had cramped the quasi tolerance of gay culture common in the neighborhood in prior decades.

To track changes in the neighborhood, I used the address of Elk’s Lodge and created five maps using Social Explorer to track demographic changes in the neighborhood using census data. I specifically picked the categories of race, education, and housing valued at $100,000 because a) the population represented in Paris is Burning was largely minority and b) a working thesis that the neighborhood may have gentrified – specifically, an increase in the neighborhood population’s education levels and housing values. These maps are by no means comprehensive nor have I checked my methods. These maps are for demonstration purposes only! 

Anyways, here are my maps: the 1990 map is left and colored green and the 2014 map is on the right colored blue – move the slider to see the changes:

To learn how to use Social Explorer, check out this great Youtube tutorial made by fellow ITF, Andrew Lucchesi with his then-colleague Darren Kwong: Exploring Social Explorer: Interactive Maps and Data Visualization for the Classroom. You can use the Pro version of Social Explorer by accessing it through the Brooklyn College Library Website > Databases > Social Explorer > create account with your .edu email address.