How to Write a Critical Essay

Whether you're an English major or just completing your college requirements, knowing how to write a critical essay will give you an edge throughout your academic and professional careers. Writing critical essays enables you to develop critical skills including close and careful reading, technical research, scholarly writing, referencing and proofreading. Learning these techniques will help you enter into academic conversations and gain tools to think and communicate in more profound ways.

Step to Write a Critical Essay

1. Learn your paper topic as soon as possible to help plan your research.
2. Find research from a wide variety of sources including journal articles, books, encyclopedias, and news sources. Gather more information than you expect to actually reference when writing your paper.
3. Skim through your sources to separate the interesting research from the irrelevant material.
4. Reread the relevant material thoroughly and critically.
   1. Highlight, underline, or otherwise mark any journal articles or books you own. Use different color post-it notes to direct your attention to critical details from library books.
   2. Summarize or otherwise annotate each source after you've read it. Note a few important details and the source's main argument for future reference.
5. Brainstorm a topic by reviewing your notes and research. You may choose to write out a rough thesis statement or you may instead opt to ask a critical question that your paper will answer.
6. Sketch out a rough introduction, recognizing that you may want to edit or rewrite your introduction later.
7. Develop a rough outline based on your research notes.
   1. Identify two or three major sections for the body of your paper. These sections should consist of the most important portions of your argument.
   2. Use your notes and research to fill in the details of your sections. You may copy and paste critical details or arguments into your outline.
8. Identify the relationship between your paper's sections and briefly describe it in the margins of your outline.
9. Use this relationship to sketch a rough conclusion.
10. Set aside your paper for a few days before revising your draft.
11. Give yourself sufficient time to do a substantive revision that clarifies any confusing logic or arguments.
12. Complete your paper by carefully proofreading a printed version of your final draft.
13. Use your imagination and make the introduction interesting for the reader.
14. Write a clear thesis statement and use up-to-date sources rich with facts.

Tips to Write a Critical Essay

• It is often easier to write a rough introduction and proceed with the rest of the paper before returning to revise the introduction. If you're feeling lost on how to introduce your paper, write a placeholder introduction.
• Recognize that you will not have enough time to thoroughly read ten or twelve books on your topic. Use the book's table of contents and index to guide your search for the most relevant chapters.
• Narrow your topic as you move through the writing process. Many students make the mistake of picking an overly-broad topic in hopes of having enough to say, but it is actually easier to say more on a narrow topic. For example, writing a paper on whether or not war in general is ethical would be nearly impossible. In contrast, writing a paper on whether or not we should be fighting a particular war is manageable.
• Try to get started early if at all possible. You'll produce much better work--and be a lot less stressed--if you write your paper over the course of several evenings instead of in one marathon session.
• Finish a rough draft a few days early to give yourself time to revise.

• If you have trouble structuring your paper, write a new outline of your paper based on the topic sentences of paragraphs. On your outline, write a sentence explaining the relationship between topic sentences. If you cannot quickly explain this relationship, this means that your paragraphs are out of order and you should reorder them.
• If you have trouble using appropriate language and grammar, print a hard copy of your paper and read it out loud, or at least in a quiet room. Carefully mark any and all errors in pen before returning to your computer to revise.
  • Ask a friend, family member or other acquaintance to proofread and comment constructively on your paper. Professional writers go through several drafts of their work and you should expect to do the same.
  • Work within your own process. For example: Some people need outlines while others find that formal outlining hinders their ability to write. Recognize what works best for you and adjust accordingly.
  • Write in your own voice. It is better to correctly use the words you know than to misuse the words you do not know in an attempt to sound scholarly.
    

Warnings to Write a Critical Essay

• Make sure to cite all of your research including quotations, statistics and theoretical concepts as accurately as possible. When in doubt, err on the side of citing more rather than less, since failing to cite your research can result in a charge of plagiarism.

• Papers written at the last minute suffer from logic gaps and poor grammar. Remember that your teacher has read hundreds, if not thousands of student papers, and as such, can tell when you've written a paper at the last minute.

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