Review

Academic Writing Assignment: Review

Overview
For this review essay, you will be writing to inform, to describe, to explain, and to analyze/review something–a text, a movie, an ad, a video, etc. Your review will inevitably involve both exposition and analysis. Now, why both exposition and analysis? Why mixing the two together? Because you can hardly perform one activity without engaging in the other. When you describe or explain something, you’re using selective details, and you inevitably will do some analysis. On the other hand, when you analyze something, you can’t do it without first describing or explaining what that something is or is like.

For the purpose of the assignment, keep in mind that while both exposition and analysis are important for this essay, your ultimate purpose is analysis and review since your exposition (description and explanation) serves to set up your analysis and review.

Objectives
Through this assignment, you will learn to

  • describe and explain,
  • analyze and review the various aspects of a particular object or phenomenon,
  • write succinct but informative summaries,
  • possibly use some outside sources to aid your analysis,
  • produce coherent, organized, readable prose for different rhetorical situations,
  • engage in writing as a process, including invention (such as brainstorming for ideas), developing a thesis statement, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading,
  • respond to your classmates’ writing and provide constructive feedback,
  • respond to your classmates’ response to your writing and learn how to incorporate your classmates’ suggestions into your revision,
  • use grammatical, stylistic, and mechanical formats and conventions appropriate for different audiences and writing situations, and
  • reflect on your own writing and writing process and on your classmates’ writing and writing process.

Topic–Object of Analysis
What should you select to review? There’re many possibilities:

  • A physical space or setting, such as a restaurant, a park, a museum, etc.–focus on what’s unique and interesting about it
  • A problem or issue concerning anything, e.g., the current election or any other politics, economy, culture, sports, entertainment, family, society
  • An activity or experiment, e.g., posting a strange directive sign in a public place and observe how people react to it
  • A text/document, e.g., a book, an article, a poem, a newspaper editorial, an ad,
  • A media product, .e.g, a film, a video, a television show, a TV commercial, a presidential debate, a website
  • …

 

Writing the Essay
This essay should be quite different from your previous essay In several ways.

Content
Your essay should include a good description of the object of your review. This often means a good, succinct summary as well as informative descriptions of particular features or aspects. For your analysis and review part, you need to present a balanced perspective supported by good evidence, which may mean details about the object itself, good reasoning, as well as some external sources. What’s important to keep in mind is that in analyzing and reviewing something, we’re trying to make meaning out of it and to pass an opinion on something based on evidence and support.

Organization
Because you’re analyzing and reviewing something (most likely something your audience has not seen or read), you first have to describe what it is and give your readers a good idea about the object of your analysis and review before you can review it. Such an essay can certainly be organized in a number of different ways. How exactly you should organize your essay is up to you; it depends on your perspective and how you perceive to be a logical sequence.

Logos
In this review essay, while ethos and pathos are still important, logos becomes a key to constructing an effective and convincing analysis and review. Because you’re presenting a particular perspective, your essay needs to show a strong logic how you arrive at that perspective.

Perspectives
Analysis and review entail interpretation, and interpretation is inevitably subjective as virtually anything can be interpreted in different ways. To convince people that your review is balanced and objective, you need to consider all the differing perspectives and prove how your particular perspective is supported by logical reasoning and evidence.

Audience
Your audience for this essay will be people who may not have read or seen what you’re analyzing or at least who haven’t read or seen it carefully. This doesn’t mean you can’t write this analysis for someone who is very familiar with what you’re reviewing. Either way, it’s helpful to keep in mind that your audience may not necessarily share your perspective due to, for example, their differing tastes, values, morals, ethnic or cultural backgrounds, educational backgrounds, etc.

Some Technicalities
Please follow the following guidelines carefully.

  • Length–1-3 pages
  • Format–Any readable typeface, serif or sans serif; font size no smaller than 10 and no bigger than 12; single space; (recommended default: 12-point Times New Roman)
  • Name block–On the first page, in the top left corner, include your name block.
  • Footer–Use a footer at the bottom of each page, with your name on the left and page number on the right.
  • File names–Make sure you save your files exactly as follows: ‘review(YourName）.”

Your paper will be graded primarily, though not exclusively, on the following:

  • Ideas
  • Development
  • Organization
  • Audience
  • Style
  • Grammar and Mechanics