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High school, college and university students are often assigned to write reviews and reports on certain books, articles, stories and movies. However, most students do not have enough time to do the reading, so they need to learn how to complete such assignments using outside sources.
How To Write A Review Paper And Avoid Common Mistakes While Writing
Form your own opinion first of all -- What is it that you’re reviewing? Is it a book? A film? A theatre performance? Piece of art-work? A science experiment? A topic of academic interest? If you’re reviewing something you’re often weighing up the good and bad points. My first piece of advice would be to form your own opinion on whatever you’re reviewing first of all. Whatever you’re reviewing make sure you experience it first-hand, i.e. If it’s a film – then watch the film; a book, then read the book. A common mistake would be to just refer to summaries; using crib-notes won’t really allow you to review it properly. If it is a book you need to review, that has a film version, be wary of assuming the film version will accurately depict the book – this is a common mistake! Whatever you’re reviewing - what do you like, dislike, enjoy, or feel frustration, or irritation about when you reviewed it? Write down these thought first of all, to get your own sense of review and argument about it. Depending on what academic background you’re approaching this from, there will be certain techniques that are specific to your field, that you’ll need to apply in order to conduct a thorough review.
Be analytical and critical in your review and not just descriptive – A key error students make is to simply re-tell the story/event they reviewed in a descriptive manner. For high marks you need to be analytical and critical. You are looking for holes in the argument, where would its argument not stand up to close scrutiny? What has been missed out? When reviewing you are comparing what is in front of you, with what other people have said previously in their research. This leads onto the next point.
Do lots of thorough research – Dependent upon what you’re reviewing whether it something like a book, or a film, or a certain topic; what you want to be showing in your review is a sound understanding of the latest research in this area. How does what you’re reviewing agree or differ from other research in this area? By being well informed and being able to compare and contrast, this will show your knowledge and expertise in the subject, and show that you really have a good grasp on what research is out there – and are therefore in a position to be able to make a well-informed credible review. Your references and bibliography should be full of lots of books and in particular journal articles from the last 3-5 years, if not even more current, to show that you’re aware of other cutting edge research. If you have room in your review paper, you can also look at older research, to see changes in thinking over the decades (as your subject area has developed there ‘may’ be different schools of thinking associated with it, and key theorists in the area). After you have formed your own opinion – so that you have a strong voice throughout the review, have researched what other research in this area is out there, it can then be useful to look at what other reviews have been done. The reason it’s good to form your own opinion first of all, is so that you’re not swayed or influenced by other reviews.