critical essay

How Do I Write a Critical Essay or an Analytical Reaction Paper for a Film? When writing your critical essay or your analytical reaction paper for a film, keep in mind the following: 1. You are the expert on the book and/or film you are writing about. 2. Your readers do not necessarily know anything about that book or film. 3. You are not writing your comments for the instructor, but, as implied under “2”, for a

general audience of non-initiated but college-educated readers who may –or may not— have heard about the authors or their books. The same applies for you analytical reaction paper: your audience might not have seen or heard about the films or their directors.

4. Or... if you prefer: imagine that you are a book or film critic for say... the NY Times or Wall

Street Journal... and that your task is to introduce your readers to the authors and their books or the films and their directors.

5. Since you are the expert, you can present your book or film in any way you choose as long

as your presentation contains critical comments about them. That means, that you can talk about each entire book, or a series of chapters, or one particular chapter, or the book’s character, problematic, in short about anything you particularly liked in the book. As for the films, you can talk about the entire films, a couple of scenes you like or a struck by, the main ideas and characters of the film…

6. You first need a title for your critical essay and analytical reaction paper for your film. This

will help you, the author and writer of the paper, to focus on what you really want to talk about in your essay. This will also announce to your reader what you want to discuss about.

7. In an critical essay or reaction paper for a film, there are usually four sections:

 An Introduction (5% of your essay) that briefly presents:

 Some bibliographical data regarding the book/film you review, such as the title of the book or film, the name of its author, its publication date and location, and the language in which it was originally published;

 A brief description of the context in which the book/film you are discussing was produced.

 A short indication as the author’s purpose in writing this book or making the film.

 What, i.e. the main idea(s) or theme(s) of the book/film, you will be discussing in your paper.

 A short Summary of the book (10% max) that:

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 Answers the six Ws questions 1 ;

 Consists of a condensed version of the book/film you are discussing and is written in your own words;

 Guides your reader toward the analysis you will be doing in your paper;

 Does NOT give away the end of the story.

 A Detailed and Analytical Discussion (80% of your essay) of the book’s or film’s main characters, themes, ideas. This is where you argue your position, providing explanations, evidence and examples to back up your reasoning. For more info about this part, read the notes entitled About the Detailed and Analytical Discussion of your Critical Essay/Film Reaction Paper.

 A Conclusion (5% max) that may contain the following:

 A brief review of the main ideas you have presented in your essay;

 A brief explanation how you yourself understand the book/film;

 Whether or not you like the book/film;

 A suggestion to your reader as to read the book or how to approach the film;

 An answer to the following two questions: (1) Why did the author write his/her book? Or: Why did the director

make the film? (2) What implicit or hidden message did the author/director attempt to

convey to the audience with his/her book/film beyond the obvious story?

8. The aim of such assignments is for you to express your own personal ideas about the

books/films we will have read or seen in this class. Why was a specific book/film interesting? What touched you particularly? What did you especially like? Why was it relevant for you?

9. There are no bad answers. However, you need to work your writing style and your

grammar. Your comments will be judged in terms of the organization of your paper, your ideas, your discussion, and how you presented the book/film.

10. What material to use? You can use your book, your class notes, your reading notes, your

focused free writing on the subject, and the summaries of the discussions we had in class.

1 The Six Ws are questions whose answers are considered basic in terms of information. They constitute

a formula for getting the complete story on a topic. Accordingly, a report is considered complete if it answers the following 6 questions starting with an interrogative word:

 Who is it about?  When did it take place?  Why did it happen?

 What happened?  Where did it take place?  How did it happen?

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11. Do I need to use quotes from the book/film I discuss? Only if you want to. If you do: make sure that you use quotations marks and also document your sources.

 For both assignments, you need include a “Quoted sources” rubric at the end of your text with the bibliographical as well as internet data you used to write your assignments.

 To document your sources, you can use either the APA or MLA protocol to quote sources.

 If you fail to do so, you might be suspected of cheating and/or plagiarism and in big trouble and have to deal with the Dean of Students…

12. How long does my critical essay have to be? Each critical essay need to have 650-700

words for your critical essays and 600 words for your reaction paper. 13. Why such an exercise? To get you to learn to write essays that present some of your ideas

about a book you've read and to discuss them in an intelligent and sophisticated way. 14. If you still have doubts about how to do this:

 You can always turn in your critical essay before the due date.

 Use the English Writing Center (ED 186) to help you with writing your essay.

 Use a friend, a classmate for feedback or as sound board?

 Read your text aloud. All of these suggestions are recommended as long as you do not plagiarize and indicate at the end of your text that you use some help from another person or the English Writing Center. This indicates that you are serious about improving your writings skills and favorably impresses your instructors about your efforts toward being successful in your courses.

Sources & additional information are available via the following links:

 http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/printer/5w1h.pdf

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

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 http://depts.washington.edu/owrc/Handouts/How%20to%20Write%20a%20Summary.pdf

 http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Critical-Analysis

 http://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/elejeune/critique.htm

 http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jewel001/CollegeWriting/WRITEREAD/CritReview/samples.htm

 http://www.germanna.edu/tutor/handouts/english/literary_analysis.pdf