Skip Navigation
Skip to Menu Toggle Button

Online Guide to Writing and Research Thinking Strategies and Writing Patterns

Patterns for Presenting Information

Critiques

Did you like the movie you saw the other night? How about that song you listened to, or that basketball meme, that video game, or those stylish clothes? 

We give our opinions on a frequent basis, and if you think about it, you might discover your opinion is based on a criterion, whether that criterion is your personal taste, a theoretical model, what you know about right and wrong, or even a fact or two. In college you will be asked to provide your opinion in a more formal way. We call these tasks, and sometimes full assignments, critiques.

Writing critiques improves your critical and analytical thinking and hones your evaluative skills. While a summary is meant to represent the original source faithfully, a critique is meant to be a critical assessment of the reading material.

Critiques

Key Takeaways

  • Critiques are critical responses to the source material and include the writer’s statements of opinion.
  • Keep in mind that although the advice above generally applies, individual disciplines can use their own methodology and language (and sometimes structure) for critiquing, so you should review critiques in your field and discuss them with your classmates or instructor to find good models.


Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. © 2022 UMGC.
All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing