Critical writing
time to complete: 5 minutes
Critical writing is a balanced presentation of reasons why the conclusions of other writers may be accepted or may need to be treated with caution;
These are common feedback comments, suggesting that you need to improve criticality:
- ‘engage more critically with the source material’
- ‘too descriptive’
- ‘not enough critical analysis’
- ‘lack of discussion’
- ‘you tend to adopt others' terms without questioning them’
- ‘lack of discussion of underlying principles’
- ‘less description, more criticality’
You need to make sure your writing contains:
- a clear presentation of your own evidence and argument, leading to your conclusion;
- a recognition of the limitations in your own evidence, argument, and conclusion;
- Signposting language, that is, language to show the functions of your writing, e.g. ‘moreover, furthermore, indeed’ to develop and strengthen arguments.