Hannah-Hansen W131 Assignment/Grade Sheet

December 5: Thesis and introductory paragraph with working thesis statement and outline of one body paragraph due by the end of period.

December 10: (Please bring two copies) Rough Draft Due: _____15 points

December 14: Final Draft Due___________75 points

CRITIQUE: The critique is a written analysis that focuses on one source text. It incorporates a summary but the summary serves to advance the analysis of the source. The purpose of the critique paper is to increase the reader’s understanding of the source text, not to persuade the reader to any particular belief or action.

Paper assignment: Write a 3-4 page (750-1000 words) critique of one of the following essays:

Zepp, Guen and Smith, Paquet, Cohn, or Guterson

Your purpose in critiquing the article is to increase your reader’s understanding of the author’s concerns as well as to point out what seems to be going on in the article that isn’t immediately apparent (underlying assumptions). The goal of this paper is to help the reader who has read the article to understand it more deeply, to understand what is at stake for the author in raising the issue, to understand the significance and/or implications of the article, and to understand what is implicit or assumed in his or her argument. The analysis in the paper will focus on such things as the use of terms, the logic and shape of his argument (i.e. logical fallacies, emotionally loaded terms, faulty cause and effect, ad hominem, hasty generalizations, false analogy, oversimplification, non sequitur, etc) the quality of his or her evidence and how effectively the author uses this evidence (fair use of information, hasty generalizations, faulty cause and effect, etc), and the underlying assumptions the author holds (biases, political ideologies, etc) and how these assumptions might shape and inform his or her essay.

Strategies for writing the critique: Read and study the article to be analyzed. Be sure that you understand the main points and can see how the parts of the article are related to each other. Consistently ask yourself, what is really going on here? Why is the author addressing this topic? REMEMBER: like a color-commentator on a sports broadcast, you want to illuminate what’s under the surface of the essay, not merely judge it as good or bad. Refer to "Guidelines for Writing Critiques" in WRAC and WA, Chapter 5, pp. 137-141, "Linking Evidence and Claims", pp. 148-160, "Building a Paper by Analyzing Evidence in Depth: 10 on 1." Please use p. 38 in WRAC as your structural tool for organization

 

Criteria for Evaluation:

Introduction: includes both the title and author of the passage under analysis, provides appropriate background and contextual evidence surrounding the article to be critiqued, (should include some information about author, the issue at stake, etc) that funnels into a thesis /10

 

 

Thesis: makes a claim which requires the paper to be written and that makes an analytical rather than an argumentative claim (avoids a simple agree, disagree statement). /10

 

 

Summary of selected essay that is brief, accurate, objective, concise and is integrated into the analysis of the essay; writer of critique includes the main claim/thesis statement presented by the

author of the essay. /5

 

 

Analysis that provides a greater understanding of the article; writer uses key terms derived from WRAC Chapter 2 to critique the essay as well provide an analysis and close reading of representative examples from the essay to demonstrate particular points made about the essay

/30

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion: conclusion that sets out the larger implications or significance of what you found in the analysis and is earned through careful analysis of evidence, support, reasons, and/or underlying assumptions: /10

 

 

 

Readability: Use of language and writing style is competent, that is not distracting to the average reader. Essay contains few, if any, grammatical or sentence level errors (no frag, cs, ro, SAQ).

/5

 

 

Format: Paper is formatted correctly and writer has used proper in text citation style as well as proper format for the works cited page. Incorrect works cited will result in a loss of all points here.

/5