Helpsheet

CRITICAL REVIEWS

Use this sheet to help you:
• conduct a critical review of an article • structure and write a critical review

5 minute self test
Circle either ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ in the points below: In a critical review, you: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. should / shouldn’t assume the reader is familiar with the text should / shouldn’t provide a summary of the text should / shouldn’t provide many quotes should / shouldn’t be ‘hyper-critical’ should / shouldn’t write an introduction, a body and a conclusion

Check your answers on Page 10

This publication can be cited as: Davies, W. M. and Beaumont, T. J. (2007), Critical Reviews, Teaching and Learning Unit, Faculty of Business and Economics, the University of Melbourne. http://tlu.fbe.unimelb.edu.au/ Further credits: Pesina, J. (design and layout).

FACULTY OF

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Helpsheet

CRITICAL REVIEWS

Introduction
The process of critically reviewing an article can seem intimidating. How, you may worry, can you think of things to say about an article written by an expert? What if you can’t find anything to “criticise”? How will you avoid just producing a summary of the article? And, how should you structure the review? There are no simple techniques that can make writing a critical review easy. A critical review is something that takes time, care and thought. Perhaps, for hours and hours, you may feel you are getting, nowhere, but then suddenly, maybe while in the bath, you have an idea… The purpose of this Helpsheet is to provide you with an approach that can help you get ideas and give you a sense of how to structure and write the review. You may find the two examples at the end of this Helpsheet to be useful.

Writing a critical review in 10 steps
Step 1
Skim the article you have to review to gain a general idea of what it is about. This process should take you about