A critical essay involves the analysis, study of a phenomenon, subject or process, which allows the author to identify both negative and positive sides of it. The object of the study of a critical essay is a scientific work or work of art.

Writing critical essays often helps students to develop critical thinking. This is achieved as follows:

  • detection of contradictions in the analyzed object;
  • definition of errors and inaccuracies;
  • evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of the object or phenomenon;
  • checking the reality of the arguments.

If all this seems too complicated to you, you can always turn to essay writing help , which is sure to help you with writing a critical essay. But if you are confident and ready to start this task on your own, then read this article, it will help you understand the process of writing a critical essay.

Working with the original document

This stage is preparatory in the work of writing a critical essay and involves a number of actions:

  1. Make a copy of the scientific or artistic work about which you are going to write a critical essay. It can be a photocopy or a scanned version. Do not forget to check the availability of work in electronic form, if you managed to find it, it will greatly facilitate your work.
  2. Read the text of the work to understand at least in general what it is about. Write a draft of your first impression of reading. If the work you are studying is too large volume, then read it in parts, also write down your impressions and thoughts from reading.
  3. At the next stage, proceed to the re-reading of the work, this time not for the purpose of acquaintance, but in order to pay special attention to the details of the work:
  • the presence of arguments confirming the thesis;
  • the structural construction of the text;
  • completeness;
  • the presence of a logical connection between the elements of the work.
  1. If something in the read work has caused you bewilderment, emphasize these fragments of work so that you can easily find them in the text if necessary, make notes, noting the strengths and weaknesses of the work, in your opinion.

Writing a critical essay

Once the research work on the document has been done and you have compiled a list of its strengths and weaknesses, you can start processing the available information into the text of a critical essay:

  1. As an introduction, indicate the title and author of the work that has been studied and to which your critical essay is devoted. Do not forget to specify the date of publication of the work and all the grades that the author was awarded:
  • Give a description of the work studied, but do not need to delve into it, write a brief to acquaint readers of your critical essay with the content of the analyzed work;
  • Pay attention to the author’s personality, describe his authority in the scientific field, the presence of degrees and titles, and list his publications, scientific works. Also, give your assessment of how he correctly and literacy presents the material, whether the actual data is used, whether there are no contradictions in his work.
  1. The main part of the critical essay considers the presence of arguments and counter-arguments in the paper. If you find in the work too abstract definitions that require more specificity, write about it. Perhaps it is necessary to conduct new research that will help to better disclose those or other issues that are not given due attention in the work, from your point of view, it was possible to apply other methods and approaches than those used by the author. But don’t forget that everything you write should also be reasoned. The purpose of your essay is not just to criticize a scientific work, but to give it a reasonable critical assessment.
  2. Conclusion. Based on all the material in the critical essay, give your assessment of the analyzed work and express your opinion about it. If your opinion is contrary to the opinion of the author, then offer your methods and ideas that you think are most appropriate. Indicate how much the author’s work is significant to science from your point of view.