Your university might assign you to write a Review article that is basically written for the academic audience intended to write, summarize and critique the author already published work.
What Is An Article Review?
An article review is a summary and an evaluation of another writer’s article. Article reviews are a good way of getting introduced to the content written by the experts in the field. Interpreting the main idea of the content, the logical evaluation, and supporting arguments are some of the most important aspects of an article review.
An article review is considered to be a professional piece of writing because the process requires review, summary and understanding of the topic. The process can only be carried out by experts who have insight into logically evaluating a piece of writing and providing the critique.
Types Of Article Review
An article review may be either a literature review or a critical review. Let’s have a brief introduction to each of the type of article review:
Critical Review: A type of article review focused on a specific article or book having a rather smaller scope. It summarizes and evaluates the information and ideas mentioned in an article. It comprises of your (the writer’s) perception in the light of what you already know about the topic and what you acquire from related texts.
Literature Review: A Literature review is a survey of scholarly articles like thesis, books, and journals. It is a type of article review with a broader scope giving an overview of concepts, key findings, and developments related to a research problem or question.
Advantages Of Reading Article Reviews
There are many benefits that reading article reviews bring. The biggest advantage beginners can get by reading article reviews is that they can get introduced to the work done by the experts. Apart from that, there are many benefits of article review examples such as:
- It helps readers identify the advancements, researches, and discoveries in a specific field.
- It facilitates the determination of the main people working in the industry.
- Readers can read article reviews to identify any gaps in the research to lead to better solutions.
- Article reviews can be used as a reference in current debates.
- Reading article reviews is a good idea to come up with new fields of research.
- It helps beginners to improve their skills and knowledge of a particular field of research.
Why Article Review is important?
Below are some of the reasons why article review is important:
1. It clears out unclear words
There might be vague words or phrases in an article. A good article review helps a writer decide whether to change the terminology or not.
2. It gives more clarification to a question
An article review might help the reader better understand the meaning and importance of some of the unclear statements and questions mentioned in the article.
3. Helps the author to be unbiased
It provides other writer’s perceptions of raised issues. Reading an article review might broaden the scope of the author and help the author get out of personal biases.
4. Makes your writing skills better
Writing an article review improves the writing skills of the writer and helps them in conscience writing.
5. Motivates the author to write better
An article review suggests areas of improvement and provides criticism, thus allowing the author to write better content.
Article Review Format And Its Application
These are the key components of an article review:
- Title Page: This is the first page of your article review and should contain all the information identifying the contents of the article.
- Title: The title of the article review should be interesting to the reader and should predict the contents of the review.
- Name: The name of the writer of the article review.
- Date: Date of review.
- Abstract: An abstract comprises a summary of the review question, the study reviewed primarily, and the conclusion drawn from the study. It should be around 200-300 words. A reference citation is not encouraged in writing an Abstract.
- Introduction: Introduction is the topic of study serving as the identification sentence. It should be an indication of the article’s contents. It should include the order in which every sub-topic is covered so that the reader can have a clear picture of all the sections the article is divided into.
- Body: It comprises of the sub-topics that you address throughout the article.
- Conclusion: It summarizes your rationale for the review and the central purpose of the article.
- Literature cited: It is a collection of all the references used in your in-text citations used in the article. It should be written in MLA style which is the standard way of writing it.
Guide On How To Write A Good And Interesting Article Review
To write an exceptional article review, a writer must be prepared beforehand. Here are the steps required to excel in the preparation for writing an article review.
Preparation Of Writing An Article Review
Step 1: Understand The Article Review
The writer must be aware of the fact that the audience reading the article review has knowledge of the scope of the article. It is not the general audience you are referring to. A good article review must have a summary of the main ideas of the article, propositions, arguments, and findings. It should also provide critique on contributions of the material and how effective the overall field of study is.
- Important points to note: An article review only contains a review on the research of the author. It never involves new research.
- An Article review assesses and summarizes someone else article who are knowledgeable in their subject.
Step 2: Identify The Structure Of The Review
The writer must know the organization and structure of the article review to understand how to read an article. Below mentioned steps will be helpful in writing a useful article review:
- Sum Up The Article: Summarize the article to include important points, information, and claims in the review.
- Highlight Positive Aspects: Discuss the good points mentioned in the article and the author’s insights.
- Identify the gaps: Look for gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions by the author in the article. Also, identify if the research data provided to support the claims of the author is enough or not. Look for questions that remain unanswered by the author.
Step 3: Preview The Article
Instead of reading the article entirely, look at the title of the article, abstract, the main headings, the opening sentences of paragraphs and the conclusion. After that, read some of the first paragraphs and the conclusion to understand the main points and arguments highlighted by the author and then read the entire article.
Step 4: Throroughly Read The Article
As a part of the preparation, read the article a number of times to outline important sections. Do not forget to highlight the main points and their supporting facts. Writing notes and stating cross-references on the important points is also essential.
Step 5: Summarize The Article In Your Own Words
Make sure you write all the central points mentioned in the article clearly and logically.
Review the summary to filter out unnecessary details.
Step 6: Create an evaluation outline
After summarizing the article and reviewing it, identify the important aspects like contributions to the field, instances of effective writing and certain areas that need improvement in the article. Also, identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. For example, strength can be the author’s way of identifying an issue and weakness can be a lack of supporting solutions to resolve that issue.
Now that the preparation is done, it’s time to write an article review. Writing an article review involves the following steps:
Step 1: Write The Title Of Review
You can choose to write an interrogative title or a descriptive one or a declarative one, it depends on your scope of focus for the review.
Step 2: Cite The Article
Just after the title of the review, write the citation in the article in a proper style. You can use MLA citation as well as APA, Chicago A or Chicago B.
Step 3: Identify The Article
Identify the article by providing the following information about it.
- Title
- Author
- Title of the journal
- Year of publication
This information must be provided in the first paragraph. An example can be: The report “Digital Marketing adversely affects business”, was written by Christopher Stephen, a Data Scientist. 2017.
Step 4: Write An Introduction
The introduction of an article review starts with an identification sentence. It also composes the central theme of the article. The author’s claims and arguments are also included in this section of an article review.
These are some of the important things to remember while writing an article review:
- You might have to identify the thesis yourself as it may not be very clear in the article and also sometimes an argument provides multiple options.
- Do not write statements as the first person i.e. “I”.
- Use formal academic style to write the overall expression of the article and it should be written using the third person i.e. “He / She”
- The introduction should only be 10% to 25% of the entire review.
- It should end with the thesis and it must address the issues. Here is the example of an argument:
“Although there are valid points in the article, it contains misinterpreted data and the author’s bias from other authors on the subject of digital marketing.”
Step 5: Summarize The Article
Summarize the central points, supporting arguments and observations in your own words. you can mention the way the author supports their claim and write the final word. You must take care of the following points that are important in writing the summary of an article review:
- Write the summary in several paragraphs. The length of each paragraph depends on the requirements of the publisher or instructor.
- Include specific statistics, examples or background information that looks familiar to the experts of the field you are focusing on in your review.
- Don’t forget to write the main points of each section.
- Whenever appropriate, use direct quotes from the author.
- Reread the summary several times to fix any errors.
Step 6: Provide A Critique
Write in your own words how well the author has addressed the problem. Apart from this, mention how useful and thorough the information provided in the article is. Indicate the importance of the conclusions drawn in the article to the field as well as any biases found in the article. Mention if you agree with the writer or not. if you do, provide reasons for your support and if you don’t, state the reasons why. Also, indicate the audience that would benefit from reading the article.
Step 7: Conclude The Article Review
Conclude the main points indicated by the author in your summary. Write your reviews regarding the clarity, significance, and accuracy of the article. You can also add your comments on the implications as it can play an important role in futuristic researches. The conclusion should not exceed 10% of the length of your entire article.
Step 8: Proofread Your Review
Proofread your review and correct any grammar mistakes, structural errors, and misspellings. Remove all unnecessary information from the article. Make sure you discuss 3-4 critical issues in your review to make it as good as possible.
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