4 Easy Ways For Writing Critical Analysis
Composing a critical examination exhibits your abilities of critical thinking. This expertise is fundamental for finishing some instructive courses and working as an educator, critic or in some administrative or dynamic jobs. In this article, we will examine what critical investigation is, the interaction for composing a critical examination and offer some tips and an illustration of an elegantly composed critical investigation.
Define critical analysis?
A critical analysis is a form of an essay or paper that a writer is to examine and evaluate an idea, theory or statement. You can call it a form of an investigation that a writer carries out to come to a solid conclusion about a given topic. A critical analysis always has two sides to it; one side opposes the idea and the other is in support of the idea.
A thorough research has to be conducted before writing critical analysis and the writer must come to terms with one of the sides before writing it. The reason is that in this analysis, the writer has to lay down facts and create an evaluation based on those facts, to convince the reader to come to the same conclusion as them. The writing style is completely subjective as it is based on breaking down a theory and studying its parts to develop an interpretation of your way of thinking. You can conduct a critical analysis of almost anything; books, movies, shows, business operations, someone’s academic report etc.
You will be asked to write a paper or essay that critically analyses a topic when you are in high school or college. Your teacher will give you a topic to write on so that you can learn how to evaluate matters and come to sound conclusions. Conducting a critical analysis teaches you to examine all the negatives and positives before coming to any conclusion.
It will teach you how to have a critical edge. This form of essay or paper is normally considered to be rather more daunting as compared to other forms of writing. The reason is that it requires a lot of attention to detail, thorough research and you have to study that research too.
It requires a lot of attention because critical analyses are all about stating the right facts. You cannot state a fact the wrong way because it will make your entire analysis invalid. People normally seek help from others when writing a paper like this. You can even hire assignment writers if you find the task too time consuming.
Ways to write a critical analysis
Before you get down to the actual writing process, you need to understand how important your research and study is. You cannot conduct a critical analysis without conducting the right research because you need to study each and every school of thought related to the topic you are writing about before you can derive a conclusion.
You will have to review other people’s analyses before you conduct your own. For example, if you are asked to conduct a critical analysis about a specific theory, you will need to first research on the theory and then you will need to research on other people’s views about that theory. If you are analysing a scientific theory, you will need to study to analyse other scientists. You can support the topic or you can oppose it. You will need to study your research and then discuss all the positives and negatives so that you can bring the reader to a conclusion.
So, you need to build a thorough understanding before you can actually write the analysis. Make yourself comfortable with the information that you have gathered and try to know everything at your fingertips so that you do not end up wasting time. Once you are confident in your research and are comfortable with the information, you can move forward with the four easy steps mentioned ahead:
- Make a mind map
- Create a Structure/Outline
- Write your analysis
- Come up with an introduction
- Body
- Critical analysis needs to be concluded
- Rerun and check your work
Make a Mind Map
Start by creating a list of pointers that you wish to include in your critical analysis. In this, you can include anything and everything that you wish to write about. You will be listing down all the positives, negatives and facts that prove those points. This will be the rough draft that you will use to ensure that you do not miss out on any precious information.
If you miss out on a piece of information that is vital in proving your point, your analysis will become weaker. Making a mind map might seem like a step that is not important, but it is very helpful.
Create a Structure/Outline
What you need to do in this part is to structure all of the points from your mind map in the same order that you want your analysis to be. You will basically make a sub-heading for your introduction, body and conclusion and then place all the points you wrote into each category.
You can even break up your body into multiple paragraphs. This will be a rough outline of what the final essay will look like. All the information will be presented neatly to act as a guide for you.
Write your analysis
Now that you have everything in order, you are going to want to write it all down. You will be dividing it into three parts, just like every other essay.
- Come up with an introduction
You would first want to introduce your readers to the work you have been working on. You will highlight your aim to them and also your thesis statement. You will then dive into a discussion about your main ideas and finish with your statement. The length of your introduction depends entirely on the nature of your critical analysis. Some take only a couple of lines worth of a paragraph, whereas more complex versions take multiple paragraphs for an introduction. You have to sound interesting and your words need to be persuasive enough for the reader to feel the urge to read ahead.
- Body
As the name refers, this part of the analysis will contain the fundamental debate. This part will contain all your research that you have gathered to prove a statement. All your evaluations will be stated here. This part will contain multiple paragraphs, each of which will be revolving around one specific point.
Once you are done with one point, start a new paragraph for the next point. This will be the lengthiest part of the entire paper and this is the part that needs the most attention. You have to focus a lot and be subjective and persuasive at the same time. You need to give a sense of direction to the readers before you move on to your conclusion.
- Critical analysis needs to be concluded
This part of the essay will contain the point that you are trying to prove. This will show your personal evaluation of the points you have covered in the body. This is almost the same as your introduction but it is supposed to be written in a different writing style.
This has to sound like you are coming to an end. You can write around two to four sentences and that should be fit for a conclusion. But if your conclusion is related to a complex topic.
- Rerun and check your work
Now that you are done writing your critical analysis, you need to go through it a couple of times. You will find numerous errors related to grammar or you might even come across some awkward phrasing. You will be proofreading your document to make sure there is no loose end or error that your reader might identify.
You will also need to fact check your analysis to ensure that no figures or statements have been misstated. You will find yourself making a few changes almost every time you read it. Your document can be made a bit better every time you review it. Keep reviewing your analysis till you are completely satisfied with the quality of the content.
To make your job easier and to make the proofreading process even more effective, you can ask a third party to review it. The other person will read your work from a reader’s point of view and give you a clear picture of what you can expect your readers’ feedback to be.
Ideas for penning down critical analyses
You can start by using proven writing strategies because they can make your work even more solid. You can use the following tips to make your critical analysis even better:
- You need to keep cross-referencing your outline as you are writing it. The positive of constantly referring is that you tend to not miss out on any details and maintain a flow in your content.
- In order to make your content flow even better, try using transitional words as you switch between statements. You can use words like; ‘in addition’ or ‘therefore’. These transitional words will give your content the solid impression that you need, as it will help the reader understand your point clearly.
- In this form of essay writing, you will need to be as concise as you can and your tone needs to be very persuasive. You will only speak about the matter at hand and try to not go off-topic.
- You need to speak with logic. DO not make any statements or pass any evaluation without backing it with facts. Keep a structure in your work to give the readers a better understanding.
