The article review planning
To start with, we should comment on the nature of an article review. Its intended audience has solid background and is familiar with the sphere, thus, will be judging your work professionally. In addition, you have to do an extensive research to provide opponent’s views on the topic and arguments to support your position.
Article reviews are considered to be a presentation of several opinions. The researcher will have to collect data from more than one source, and, on the basis of the material gathered, provide personal reasoning. Argumentation is an important part of the article review as you have to analyze theories, ideas and previous studies.
Furthermore, you cannot present a new approach to the subject as an article review is the incorporation of the old methodic and has nothing to do with scientific discovery. Any review’s main purpose is evaluation. For careful assessment, you have to obtain tactics that will help you analyze contradictions.
Organization tips
An article review is usually made up of three parts:
- Summary. Here, you focus on argumentative side of the question, scientific claims and relevant information. You have to be ready to present the material gathered as well as the sources, quotations and observations.
- Discussion. This is one of the key parts of an article review. In the discussion part, you accentuate the author’s positive claims. Prepare a list of points that were covered successfully and emphasize excellent reasoning.
- Contradiction. The contradiction facet is a complicated part of review writing. Here, you have to point out the unanswered issues of the article and theories that need confirmations. If there is something in the author’s work you completely disagree with, it may also be included in the contradiction paragraph.
Making an outline
Before you start, make a draft of the future article where author’s main claims are observed and assessed. Don’t spend time on proofreading and editing – this blueprint of the paper is for private use only. Pay attention, however, to the concise sentence structure as it will be essential for the further research.
After you put the article down, look at its structure to identify the key points. You can either choose the theoretical part or focus on the content. In addition, you have to cut out unnecessary sentence structures that add nothing to the idea and restate the main concepts in your own words to show that you understand the theme correctly.
Article critique and conclusion
The outline of the article is followed by evaluation. Was it clear enough to convey the main idea? Does the work provide you with answers on the theoretical part? Outlining is the key concept of an article review. Assessing the author’s ability to communicate with the reader, you appreciate the researcher’s contribution to the theme.
Summarize by making a statement on whether the audience will benefit from this article. Decide if it expands your scientific horizons and support your opinion with a clear evidence. Make sure your readers understand the argumentative part and remember you cannot show personal preferences in the review.
Avoid the word “like” and other strong emotional expressions. You cannot make personalized opinions without giving substantial reasoning and arguments. State what you think in a clear and concise manner, and use a topic sentence for each idea. If you want emphasis on a particular concept, use quotations to illustrate your point.
Once the evaluation process is over, review main ideas in one paragraph and give implications on further research. The implications are needed if you want to draw more attention to the topic or disagree with the author’s observations. In this case, you should choose a debatable article to provoke discussions.