How to Critique an Article Like a Critical Analyst

According to research 58% of high school students are assigned to write short responses or opinion pieces in their academic journey.

Learning how to critique an article is equally important whether a research student, practitioner, or professional researcher.

The process of writing such a paper can be challenging, that’s why we are here with this comprehensive guide to make the process easy for you.

Who Needs to Learn How to Critique An Article?

1. Students that are usually assigned the task to critically analyze an article.
2. Teachers need to learn it in order to evaluate their students’ performance.
3. Professional critics who earn by sharing, writing their opinions and critically viewing a piece of writing, be it a book, article, or paper.

Why learning How to Critique an Article Important?

Critical papers are very popular research papers assigned to students to evaluate their critical analysis, comprehension, and communication skills.

It has to be a very authentic paper that evaluates the information provided in an article and demonstrates a new idea or thought for research. It’s a very important paper to provide fair evaluation and present your analysis and research skills effectively.

As the author of this guide shared, “Writing a critique of an article is not easy and it took me a lot of failed attempts and hours of practice to finally be able to write some of the best papers for published journals. I made a lot of mistakes and I would like the students to practice how to critique an article process and avoid the mistakes I make.”

Who is Responsible For Teaching Critical Analysis To Students?

Let’s take a look at this statistical analysis of a survey that was conducted online and collected responses of 1000 people of different demographics.

Since most students’ critical thinking skills are drastically losing over the years, this survey is set to determine who is responsible for teaching students the critical analysis skills and what contributes to their thinking abilities.

What Does It Mean to Article Critique? Ultimate Definition

Before we get into how to critique an article, we should look into what is it. Critiquing any article, research paper, or thesis means holistically examining and evaluating the entire research work to enhance its quality.

You can look into different article critique examples to observe how it involves careful and in-depth inspection as well as an understanding of every aspect of the study to highlight strengths and weaknesses.

When critiquing any research or review paper, you assess its motivation, rationales, research questions, hypothesis, methodology, etc.

In addition to this, you also scrutinize the result interpretation, key contribution as well as evidence to resolve a particular research problem.It is also similar to the idea of the core of an argumentative essay and opinion essay.

Biggest Challenge of Writing A Critique

One of the major challenges faced by students is to not know the proper process of critiquing an article or someone else’s work. You as the writer don’t know the inspirations and motivation behind an article.

So it causes many issues for the critics to be fair and correct in their critique. That’s why it’s recommended to know the correct process before you critique an article.

What is the Difference Between Criticism and Critique?

It is important to learn the difference between a professional critique and the typical criticism that is quite common nowadays.

How to Critique an Article? Step-By-Step Tips and Guide

1. Read the entire research article at least 3 times to develop a strong understanding. Check out the critique journal article example and prompt to have a clear idea of the topic.
2. Write down central ideas and main arguments.
3. Identify research motivation, key research questions, and intended audience.
4. Critically evaluate how the proposed methodology and research approach align with the research goals and objectives.
5. Inspect the relevancy of data and literature.
6. Assess the credibility of citations and references.
7. Carefully examine the generated results and discussions to resolve the particular research problem. Do they address the intended audience and research question?
8. Analyze the authenticity of supported evidence and their integrity as well as reliability.
9. Investigate the consistency and coherency of the entire ideas throughout the research work. Assess whether they are presented logically.
10. Highlight weaknesses and strengths in the style, tone, and structure.
11. Provide valuable and constructive feedback on how to bring improvements.
12. Suggest alternate research perspectives and views to make the arguments more rigorous. For this you can use APA, MLA, Chicago or Harvard referencing tool to add referencing.
13. Leave with emphasis on important research gaps along with their cogent solutions.
14. Maintain respect and avoid personal attacks as well as insulting arguments.

Article Critique Examples, Format and Samples

Example of How to Critique an Article:

Article Title: Impact of Excessive Use of Social Media On Student’s Mental Health

Summary of Thesis Statement: This study claims that the overuse or obsession of students with social media can adversely impact their mental health which can lead to anxiety and depression.

Strengths:

• The proposed research methodology perfectly aligns with the research goals and objectives.
• Structure, tone, and style are consistent and coherent throughout the article.
• The related data and literature are well-versed and credible.
• This research article effectively summarizes the key findings and contributions persuasively.
• Go through any interesting article critique example or samples to understand how to discover the strength of your argument.

Weaknesses:

• Does not include the alternate research perspective
• No inclusion of observational research and studies in addition to surveys and interviews.
• Number of reviewed literature is too low.
• No discussion of potential research implications.
• Use of jargon and hard-to-understand language.
• Does not propose future research directions.

Suggested Improvements:

• Include recommendations and guidelines from the health experts and psychologists as well to support your claim.
• Address how the research outcome may change depending on the student’s age and demographics.
• Visit Google Scholar and other specialized academic databases to search for more credible literature.
• Explore the current trending technologies and investigate how they can also be leveraged to resolve particle problems in the future.

How to Critique an Article in APA Format? Sample Article Critique

Above we have shared the sample article critique for you.

11 Secret Reasons Why You Should Critique an Article?

The purpose of critiquing any article is to:

• Highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the entire research work.
• Evaluate and inspect the overall quality, accuracy, and effectiveness of the study.
• Emphasize the inconsistencies in the writing style, tone, and structure of the entire process of how to critique an article.
• Assess key research questions, central ideas, and arguments.
• Analyze the efficiency of the proposed methodology and research approaches.
• Review and suggest the enhancements in result interpretations and presentations.
• Critically studying the key contributions and research findings. An article critique example shares plenty of points of interest. 
• Evaluating and underscoring any conflicts in the supported evidence and the arguments.
• Providing expert opinions and valuable feedback to improve clarity and conciseness.
• Gauging understandability for the intended audience and suggesting areas for further advances.
• To evaluate the credibility as well as the integrity of the cited resources.
• To provide someone assistance in articles like professional assignment help providers.

Resources That Can Help You Think Critically

Beside going through the critique journal article example and sample, you can use the following resources to develop your critical thinking skills.

Important Take Away

• Read the main arguments and ideas of the paper to understand how to critique an article with logic and evidence.
• Critically evaluate the relevance of the referenced paper with the current study.
• Double-check the credibility of the sources.
• Assess the key findings and contributions of the paper.
• Highlight weaknesses and strengths.
• Provide constructive feedback for improvements.
• Be careful about the length of the paper. For undergraduate-level critique, complete it within 500 to 800 words. For graduates, it’s 750 to 1200 words. For peer-reviewed journals, it’s 1200 to 1500 words.

Final Thoughts on How to Critique an Article

Article critique is the process of in-depth critical analysis and evaluation of an article to highlight strengths and its weaknesses. Its primary purpose is to provide constructive criticism and feedback in order to get an enhanced version of the research work.

The common structure or format of this article includes writing a descriptive title of the article, the author’s name, a brief introduction, a body part that includes strengths and weaknesses, and feedback for improvements.