Content

• To step
• Part 1 of 4: Preparations
• Part 2 of 4: Doing research
• Part 3 of 4: Writing your essay
• Part 4 of 4: Reviewing your essay
• Tips
• Warnings

A critical essay is an analysis of a cultural work such as a book, film, article or painting. The purpose of this type of essay is to interpret a work or some aspect of a work, or to place the work in a broader context. For example, a critical analysis of a book may focus on the tone of the text, with the aim of analyzing how that tone affects the meaning of the text as a whole. For example, a critical analysis of a movie can focus on the meaning of a recurring symbol in the movie. In any case, a critical essay must contain a reasoned statement about the text, along with sufficient resources to support the interpretation of the work. Read on to learn how to write a critical essay.

To step

Part 1 of 4: Preparations

1. Make sure you understand the assignment. As soon as your teacher gives the assignment, read the guidelines and mark anything you don't understand. Ask your teacher for clarification if anything is unclear or if you simply don't understand the assignment.
2. Read your text or take a critical look at your work. For a critical essay, you need to evaluate the work in question. In order to be able to make a critical analysis of a work, you will have to become very familiar with the original work.
   • Get to know the work inside and out by reading or viewing it several times. If you have to write about a visual work such as a movie or artwork, watch the movie multiple times or view the artwork from different angles and distances.
3. Take notes while reading or viewing. Taking notes will help you remember important aspects of the work, and this will help you think critically about the work. Keep important questions in mind and try to answer these questions in your notes as you read.
   • What is the work about?
   • What are the main ideas?
   • What is incomprehensible about the work?
   • What is the purpose of this work?
   • Does this work reach its goal? If not, why not? If so, why don't you summarize the plot - you should already be familiar with the story.
     If necessary, write down your thoughts about words or passages here and there: Does he mean __? Does this have to do with __?
4. Review your notes to discover patterns and problems. After reading and taking notes about your work, look at your notes to identify the patterns in the text and the problems you notice. Also try to find a solution to any of the problems you have found. For example, if you have noticed that Frankenstein's monster is often more likable than Doctor Frankenstein, try to make an educated guess as to why this is the case.
   • Your solution to the problem will likely help you find a focus for your essay, but you don't need to have a fixed point to make about your work at this point. As you think more and more about your work, you will come closer and closer to a focus - and thus a central thesis - for your critical essay. Don't try to read the author's thoughts: "Mary Shelley wanted to make Frankenstein's monster likable. because..."
     Express your ideas as your own interpretation: "Frankenstein's monster is more likeable than its maker, which makes the reader wonder who the real monster is."

Part 2 of 4: Doing research

1. If necessary, find suitable secondary sources. If you are required to use sources for your essay you will need to do some research.Read the assignment guidelines or speak to your teacher if you have any questions about which resources are suitable for this assignment.
   • You may want to consider the following sources: books, articles from scientific or regular journals, news stories and reliable websites.
   • Search your library's databases instead of the entire web. University libraries subscribe to many databases. These give you free access to articles and other resources that you cannot usually consult with a normal search engine.
2. Evaluate your sources for reliability. For your own credibility as a writer, it is important to use only reliable sources in your academic essay. Using the library's databases is one way to find reliable sources for your essay. There are several things to consider when determining whether a source is trustworthy.
   • The author and his or her qualifications. Choose sources that contain an author name and qualifications for that author. The qualifications say something about this person's authority to speak as an authority on this subject. For example, an article about a medical condition is more reliable if the author is a physician. A source with no author's credentials or no author's name at all may not be reliable.
   • References. Assess whether the author has studied the topic sufficiently. Inspect the author's bibliography or works cited. If the author provides few or no sources, this source may not be reliable.
   • Partiality. Assess whether the author provides an objective and well-thought-out picture of the subject. How often do you notice a strong preference for one side of the discussion in the writer's tone? How often does the writer reject or ignore the opposition's objections and valid arguments? If these things are common in your source, it may not be the best choice. (Keep in mind that literary criticism often shows a strong preference for a particular interpretation - this is usually not seen as 'partiality' because the whole field is inherently subjective.) Do not reject or ignore an author just because he or she takes a particular point of view .
     Do take their arguments seriously and critically and use well-founded statements for this.
   • Publication date. Assess whether this resource contains the most current information on the topic. Paying attention to the date of publication is especially relevant for scientific topics, as new technologies and techniques sometimes make previous findings irrelevant.
   • The information from the source. If you are still unsure of the reliability of your source, check the information from this source with another reliable source. If the information provided by the author contradicts any of your trustworthy sources, it may not be a good source for your essay.
3. Read the research. When you've gathered all of your resources, it's time to read them. Use the same critical reading strategy that you used for your original work. Read your sources several times and make sure you fully understand them.
4. Make notes of your sources. Highlight and underline important parts so that you can easily find them. Also collect important information from your sources by jotting things down in a notebook.
   • Always state clearly when citing a source verbatim: use double quotation marks and include information about the source such as author, title and page number. Don't immediately highlight a piece of text if it sounds important or meaningful.
     Do highlight pieces of text that support or undermine your views.

Part 3 of 4: Writing your essay

1. Develop your preliminary thesis. After developing your own ideas about your primary source and reading your secondary sources, you should now be ready to write down a theorem or thesis. An effective thesis clarifies the focus of your essay and makes a defensible thesis. It may be helpful to create your thesis with several sentences: the first sentence then gives the general idea, and the second sentence refines this idea and makes it more specific.
   • Make sure your thesis is detailed enough. In other words, don't just say something is "good" or "effective", but state exactly what makes it "good" or "effective".
   • Write your thesis at the end of your first paragraph, unless your teacher says otherwise. The end of the first paragraph is the traditional place for the thesis in an academic essay.
   • For example, here's a multi-sentence thesis about the film's effectiveness and purpose Mad Max: Fury Road: “Many action movies follow the same traditional pattern: a male action hero (usually white and attractive) follows his gut and commands others to either follow him or die. Mad Max: Fury Road is effective because it turns this pattern upside down. Rather than sticking to the predictable chain of events, this action film features multiple heroes - many of them women - defying patriarchal standards in the Hollywood blockbuster. "Mad Max is directed by George Miller) or subjective opinions (Mad Max is the best movie of 2015) in your thesis.
     Do present an argument that you can support with evidence.
2. Make a rough text scheme based on your notes. A text outline will make it easier to organize your information more effectively for writing your essay. You can make your text scheme as detailed or general as you want. Be aware that the more details you include in your outline, the more material you will have ready for your essay.
   • If you want you can use a formal structure with roman numbers, normal numbers and letters. But you can also use an informal "mind map" structure, which allows you to gather your ideas without knowing exactly how they relate to each other.
3. Begin your essay with a provocative sentence that immediately introduces your topic. Your introduction should start right away with the discussion of your topic. So, in order to determine what to write in your introduction, you first need to think about what you are going to discuss in your essay. Keep in mind that your introduction should convey the main idea of ​​your essay, as well as act as a sort of foretaste of your essay. in modern society ...; throughout history ...; or the dictionary defines ...
   Start with an intriguing fact, anecdote or other attention grabber with relevant content.
   • Other good ways to start your essay include: providing a specific and penetrating detail related to your larger idea; ask a question that will answer your essay; or show a fascinating fact.
4. Provide background information to guide your readers. Background information and context help your readers navigate your essay. So think about what your readers need to know to understand your essay and provide this information in the first paragraph. This information will, of course, depend on the type of work you will be writing about. Do not summarize irrelevant plot twists in your introduction.
   Do tailor your introduction to your readership. A conference of academics usually needs less introduction than readers of a blog.
   • When writing about a book, always include the name of the work, the author, and a brief summary of the plot.
   • If you are writing about a movie, please provide a brief summary.
   • If you are writing about a painting or any other type of image, provide a brief description for your readers.
   • Keep in mind that the background information in your first paragraph must converge in your thesis. Explain everything the reader needs to know to understand the topic, then narrow it down until you get to the topic itself.
5. Use the main text to discuss specific aspects of the work. Make sure that each paragraph in the main text focuses on one aspect of the work, and don't try to cram multiple aspects into a paragraph. The discussion of each of these elements should help demonstrate your thesis. For each paragraph in the main text, do the following:
   • Write a statement at the beginning of the paragraph.
   • Support your thesis with at least one example from your primary source.
   • Support your thesis with at least one example from your secondary sources.
6. Develop a conclusion for your essay. Your conclusion should underline what you wanted to demonstrate to your readers about the work. Also, spend some time reflecting on what you have written so far in order to arrive at the best conclusion to your essay. There are several good options for completing an academic essay. These examples can help you decide on the structure of your conclusion:
   • Outline and summarize your main ideas about the work.
   • Explain why the topic is important to the reader.
   • Explain how your specific topic relates to a broader theme or observation.
   • Call the reader to action or further exploration of the topic.
   • Ask new questions that triggered your essay. Do not repeat the same points you have already made in the rest of your essay.
     Do refer to previously made points and connect them together in one argument.

Part 4 of 4: Reviewing your essay

1. Leave your essay for a few days before viewing it again. A break after writing your essay gives your brain a chance to unwind. You will then have a fresh new perspective as you review your essay.
   • It is important to start your essay on time so that you have a few days or even a week to read through your essay. Failure to allow yourself this extra time will result in simple mistakes that will detract from your point.
2. Give yourself enough time for a thorough revision that can clear up any confusion surrounding your arguments. During the review, you should think about different aspects of your writing to make sure your readers will understand. Consider the following questions, among other things:
   • What is the main point you want to make? How can you make this point clear?
   • What is your target audience? Have you thought about what they want and what they expect?
   • What is your goal with this essay? And have you achieved this goal?
   • How effective is your evidence? How can you make your evidence more convincing?
   • Is every part of your essay related to your thesis? How can you strengthen these connections?
   • Is there anything confusing about your language or structure? How can you clarify these aspects?
   • Did you make grammar, punctuation, or spelling mistakes? How can you improve it?
   • What would someone say who disagrees with your views? How can you deal with these counter arguments in your essay?
3. Finish your essay by printing it out and reading it carefully one last time. Read your essay aloud to make sure you don't miss any mistakes - such as language and spelling mistakes, long-winded or incomplete sentences, and other minor mistakes that can affect your final grade. Then adjust your essay and print a new version for submission.
   • If you need to submit your essay online or via email, ask your teacher which file format he or she prefers. If you have used text formatting in your essay, it is best to save your file as a PDF to preserve formatting.

Tips

• Ask a friend, family member, or other acquaintance to provide constructive criticism of your essay. Professional writers always create multiple versions of their work and this doesn't have to be any different for you.
• It is often easier to write a draft of your introduction and just continue with the rest of your essay. If you have trouble with your introduction, write a temporary version and come back to it later.
• Work in your own writing process. For example, some people prefer to write within a text outline, while others feel that such schemes only get in their way. Find out what works best for you and adjust your process accordingly.
• Write in your own words. It's better to write well with words you do know than to misuse words you don't know because you want to appear "academic."
• Try to start as early as possible. Your job will be much better - and you a lot less stressed - if you spread the process over several evenings rather than one nightly writing marathon.
• Make your topic more specific throughout the writing process. Many students choose too broad a topic, hoping to have more to say about it. In reality, it is easier to say more on a limited topic. For example, it is nearly impossible to write an essay on whether war is ethically justified in general. But writing an essay on whether we should participate in a specific war is much more manageable.
• If you have difficulty with the structure of your essay, create a new outline of your essay based on the topics of each paragraph. Then write one sentence that explains the relationship between the topics in your outline. If you can't find this relationship quickly, it probably means that your paragraphs are out of order.
• Recognize that you don't have the time to read ten books thoroughly for your essay. Instead, use the table of contents and index of a book to narrow your search to the most relevant chapters.

Warnings

• Last-minute essays will suffer from illogical reasoning and poor grammar. Realize that your teacher has read hundreds, if not thousands, of essays, so you can really tell when an essay was written at the last minute.
• Cite all your research - including literal quotes, statistics, and theoretical concepts - as accurately as possible. When in doubt, err on the side of caution and quote more than less, as a lack of citations can land you an accusation of plagiarism.