Critical does not always mean brutal or complex, but in the case of essays, we often apprehend the negative connotation of the word ‘critically evaluate or critical review’. So what does ‘critical evaluation’ or ‘critical review’ actually refers to within an essay? Let us break down the concept and understand how we can utilize these two terms in a paper to make it more valuable for a piece of writing.
The word ‘critical’ generally advocates the constitution one’s idea for a perspective backed up by logical altercation. When it is entreated to incorporate critical thinking or involve paramount elucidation while writing on a specific topic, it does not necessarily adhere to the negative commentary or idea incorporation. In other words, we can say that ‘critically evaluate’ or ‘critical review’ within an essay would not necessarily represent the negative aspiration regarding a topic; instead, it would logically support the complex idea formed based on differentiated pieces of evidence.
Critical evaluation meaning stands on the cognitive ability of a human to think beyond the aspects presented in their natural circumstances. Essays involve discussing broad topics; critical evaluation represents the ability to logically explain and argue what has been submitted to an individual by others while developing one’s perspective or opinion in the same field.
Typically, critical evaluation for critical review depends on certain aspects that a writer needs to understand while attempting a critical evaluation within an essay. Different segments of essay writing involve critical evaluation/ review as their core element, and these aspects are explored from the following particularities.
Explaining the descriptive writing:
In many cases, we often hear students experience comments from the professors that an essay is too descriptive rather than critical. We need to understand the measures of descriptive writing to reach the level of identifying critical evaluation/review within an essay. Descriptive writing is identified as a process of depicting the background of a particular topic and incorporating shreds of evidence but not getting into an argumentative discussion. In other words, descriptive writing offers a clear and pre-existing idea or a piece of information to its readers instead of turning it into specific squabbled elucidation. In academic writing, the descriptive form of an essay focuses on four significant measures that answer the four ‘W’ (Who, What, Where, When). An abduce of such standard is provided as follows.
“The author—– has depicted the main essence of this research study in advocating the relevance of the topic to the purpose of conducting industry research”
Here, it has manifested that we offer a piece of detailed information that is already presented by another author in descriptive writing. We are just a medium of describing it to our readers within a descriptive essay for descriptive writing. Henceforth, descriptive writing offers information about who the author is and the context of the study instead of providing a more critique-based perspective of the subject. Such a presentation would adhere to the need for information delivery, but it is not a relevant delineation of critical evaluation/ review in academic writing.
Critical writing:
Article writing can be a condition of critical thinking, and the entire meaning upholds forming arguments based on a specific subject or idea. In critical writing, one must manifest critical thinking ability while explaining a particular subject or topic through an essay. Critical evaluation of detailed writing represents the application of questions like what if, How, and what next that could help extract better critique-oriented writing as it exhibits that these type of questions helps a student to bring out a more critical and in-depth analysis of a situation by looking beyond what is delivered by other studies or authors. Hence, there is a lucid difference between critical writing and descriptive. In critical writing, the questions start with ‘W’ not be abundant in terms of leveling up to the requirements of critical writing.
How to achieve ‘critical evaluation/review’ in essay writing
There are a few measures that are important to consider while attempting for the critical evaluation in writing. First, a writer or a student needs to go through the secondary materials to provide information about specific topics. Unlike descriptive essays, the critical evaluation review needs to include the questions based on possibilities around the circumstance, which is evident in providing better answers to the readers’ requirements.
Students need to understand the fundamental difference between descriptive and critical writing, and to achieve that, a thorough reading of the secondary sources for the articles is essential. It manifests that as an author has presented some research-based information to their research papers, it does not mean that it should not be questioned. Critical evaluation appertains the ability of the student to explain what and why the author has served the search information while providing different and personal perspectives to that information for expounding its purpose. While closing the discussion, we need to understand certain academic writing examples of sections where critical evaluation or review are found, such as in methodology or discussion sections. Most importantly, critical evaluation refers to putting the information provided by an author or a secondary source under the light of essential perspectives and thinking. By considering the questions, a student can perform a better critical evaluation while highlighting the aspects of information that the author has not conveyed to its readers through an essay. Critical evaluation/review is also a great source of enhancing individual ability to practice critical thinking across different fields.
