English

Opinion and assertion 1. INFORMATIVE WRITING -

PROVIDE INFORMATION
Opinion Ex. recipes instruction booklets
 Latin opinio manuals academic books
 “to believe” 2. Persuasive Essay
 a judgment - persuade or convince the readers to
believe in or do something
 a belief not founded on evidence
- campaign speeches
 a popular feeling
- advertisements
Persuasive devices
 facts/ data
 anecdote
 rebuttal
 rhetoric question
3. Argumentative Essay – establish the
writer’s position and persuade the
reader

How to State Your Writing a Critique

1. Be objective. Critique - careful judgment in which you give
your opinion about the good and bad parts of
2. Be fair. something such as a piece of writing
3. Be keen. Critique
4. Be organized.  genre of academic writing that briefly
summarizes and critically evaluates a work or
concept
Assertion
 a formal, academic writing style and has a
clear structure
 gauge the usefulness or impact of a work in a
particular field
 thoroughly analyzing with the goal of
pointing out its strengths and weaknesses or
identifying its overall effectiveness

How to Write Critiques

1. Have a thorough understanding of the work
that will be critiqued.
2. Study the work under discussion.
Writing Techniques
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3. Always find both positive and negative things Critical Evaluation
to say
1. give a systematic and detailed
4. Consider the author’s/creator’s purpose and assessment of the different elements of
the historical context. the work, evaluating how well the
creator was able to achieve the purpose
5. Analyze your emotional reactions. through these
6. Do outside research. 2. does not simply highlight negative
impressions. It should deconstruct the
work and identify both strengths and
weaknesses.
Types of Critiques
Conclusion
1. Speech
2. Website  a very brief paragraph
3. Essay
4. Book or novel  statement indicating the overall evaluation of
5. Media the work
6. Research title
 summary of the key reasons why this
7. Thesis
evaluation was formed
8. Creative work
9. Work of art  recommendations for improvement on the
Main Features of a Critique work may be appropriate

1. Introduction Reference List

2. Summary  Include all resources cited in your critique.

3. Critical Evaluation
4. Conclusion ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY WRITING

5. Reference List Argumentative essays are written to get the

reader to accept a point of view. An
Introduction argumentative essay convinces readers of the
writer’s point of view.
 short (less than 10% of the word length)
 Name the work, the date, and the name of the
author/creator
 Describe the main argument or purpose of
the work
 Explain the context in which the work was
created
 Have a concluding sentence
Summary
 summarize the main points Introduction
 shorter than the critical evaluation • introduce the topic
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• emphasize the importance of the topic Literary criticism
• “hook” or “grabber” to attract the reader’s 1. Formalism - may be defined as a critical
attention approach in which the text under
discussion is considered primarily as a
• include: your opinion – tell the reader the main structure of words. That is, the main
point focus is on the arrangement of
4 Ways to Start the Introduction language, rather than on the
implications of the words, or on the
1. Shocking Statement biographical and historical relevance of
the work in question.
2. Quotation
2. Moralism
3. Statistics •studies the form of the work rather
than the content
4. Rhetorical Question •focuses on the features of the text itself
Rhetoric rather than on its creation or its
reception
• a question that doesn’t need an answer •relates literary texts to a larger
structure, which may be a particular
• used to emphasize a point to the reader genre, a range of intertextual
1. Open with a Shocking Statement connections, a model of a universal
Cigarettes are the number one cause of narrative structure, or a system of
lung cancer in Canada! recurrent patterns or motifs
2. Open with a Quotation The Feminist and Marxist Approach
Elbert Hubbard once said, “Truth is
stronger than fiction.” META – It is a Greek word which originally
3. Open with Statistics meant “beyond,” “after,” and “before.”
Authority, 65% of road accidents are something.
caused by drunk driving.
Feminist Approach – In a nutshell
Body
*It is concerned with "the ways in which
• provide ARGUMENTS to support your literature (and other cultural productions)
opinion reinforce or undermine the economic, political,
social, and psychological oppression of
• one of the paragraph discusses OPPOSING women".
viewpoints and your counter-argument
*It is also concerned with the language and style
• showcase events, arguments, and ideas of writing used to determine the relationship
Conclusion between the genders in terms of power.

• restate your stand/opinion Marxist Approach – In a nutshell

• SUMMARIZE the most important details of
the argument
• write a personal comment of call for action
• write recommendations
*It is based on socialist theories. It views
literary works as reflections of social
institutions.
*It focuses on how literary works are products
of the economic and ideological determinants
specific to that era.
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Historical Approach to Literary Criticism
•inclusion /biographical sketch of the author
•The history, experiences of the author
influence his work.
•Time, place, situations when and where the
writer wrote his work affect his work
(story/novel)
Reader-Response Approach to Literary
Criticism
•Contains the opinion of the reader about the
story/novel/poem (literary piece)
•This is the reaction or the response of the
reader after reading the work.
•After the reader reads the story, he recalls,
reacts he remembers a story or an experience
that happened to him in the past that is relevant
to the story that he just read.