Choose one of these essays and write an academic critique. The critique should communicate your understanding of the article’s main points and offer an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses.
Very early, identify the piece you are writing about, using both the title of the piece and the author’s name. The titles of pieces like this go in quotation marks (just as you see them above). Do not use italics, boldface, or any other device to show they are titles. Your first paragraph should identify the article and author, and it should be very clear about the point you are making concerning this piece. Yes, you will need your own thesis sentence.
A critique is not just a summary, nor is it a collection of random thoughts; you are making your own point.
The first time you refer to an author, use first and last name. After that, refer to the author by LAST NAME. Do not pretend that you and Alex Myers are close enough buddies that you can call him by his first name. He is 46 years old and has degrees from Harvard and Brown University. I really doubt that you ever had lunch with him or hung out to play pool. Don't treat him like a first-name buddy.
You will probably need to quote from the articles, but do not pad out your article with line after line of quotation. If you are making the point that Rouner’s language is rough, giving us half a page of his stuff is weak because you are not helping us to focus on the language you are discussing. We won’t figure out what you mean. Point out the words and phrases that make your point.
A quotation by itself cannot make your point. You need to tell us what point you are making and how the quotation supports it.
You should probably have an extremely good reason to quote more than two lines! If you quote four lines or more, follow the MLA formatting standard and indent them as a separate paragraph.
You will do much better on this paper if you begin with the right question. You are not trying to answer “Is it OK to be transgender?” You are trying to answer the question “Did the article succeed in what it aimed to do—and did it aim at doing something worthwhile?”
The central question of a critique is not whether you like or agree with a piece. Aim at a more objective critique: What is it about the piece that would look strong or weak, well-said or foolish to someone else? (Even if you personally love what the author said, was there anything that could have been done differently and better? Even if you personally hate the author’s central claim, was there something valuable in the article? Was it well-structured? Appropriate to its time?)
You are not trying to sell this piece to the reader either, so leave out “I think you should read this piece because…” Write about the article, not about your reader.
We often ignore titles so we can quickly get into the meat of the reading, but both of these articles have excellent titles that reveal a lot about the content that follows. Don’t ignore the title when you are writing your critique.
The Rouner article was originally published in a Texas newspaper—a big city one, but still in Texas. Do you think his language choices might actually undercut his message?
I found the Myers article in a textbook anthology of essays for college freshmen, but it was first published in a magazine for LGBTQ persons (and that’s the version you are reading). One question to ask is whether Myers was “preaching to the choir”—trying to convince people who already agreed with him. Note that there are two things going on in this article: Myers’s transgender experience, and Myers’s experience as a woman. They are not necessarily the same.
One recent trend is to use “they” as a singular, non-gendered pronoun. I find that awkward and confusing because the word still carries a very definite plural connotation. A sentence which says “Pat and I went out to celebrate their birthday” just loses me. A skillful writer can navigate around the issue without being either confusing or insulting: “Pat and I went out to celebrate Pat’s birthday.”
The real rule is to use the pronoun preferred by the person you are discussing. Alex Myers has a personal website which uses “he/him” all through. If that’s what Myers wants, that’s what I will use.
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.
Revised 1/2/25 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.