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