Facultad de Ciencias de la Educacin

Licenciatura en Lengua Castellana, Ingls y Francs

LITERACIES AND ELT A READING REVIEW

What is it?
It is a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion,
restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms. The most important element of a review is that it is a commentary, not merely a summary. It allows you to
enter into dialogue and discussion with the works creator and with other audiences. As a result, you should clearly state your opinion of the work in question, and that statement
will probably resemble other types of academic writing, with a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
How is it done?
Typically, reviews are brief. In newspapers and academic journals, they rarely exceed 1000 words, although you may encounter lengthier assignments and extended
commentaries. In either case, reviews need to be succinct. While they vary in tone, subject, and style, they share some common features:
- First, a review gives the reader a concise summary of the content. This includes a relevant description of the topic as well as its overall perspective, argument, or purpose.
- Second, and more importantly, a review offers a critical assessment of the content. This involves your reactions to the work under review: what strikes you as noteworthy,
whether or not it was effective or persuasive, and how it enhanced your understanding of the issues at hand.
- Finally, in addition to analyzing the work, a review often suggests whether or not the audience would appreciate it.
Before you write a review, you need to develop an assessment of the content and the form of the book, chapter or paper you read. In other words, you need to do some
critical thinking about the document before you actually begin writing. You can use the following questions to help you assess the content of a document more successfully:
- What is the thesisor main argumentof the document? If the author wanted you to get one idea from the document, what would it be?
- What exactly is the subject or topic of the document? Does the author cover the subject adequately? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a balanced fashion?
What is the approach to the subject (topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive)?
- How does the author support his/her argument? What evidence does she use to prove his/her point? Do you find that evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does any of the
authors information (or conclusions) conflict with other documents youve read, courses youve taken or just previous assumptions you had of the subject?
- How has this document helped you understand the subject? Would you recommend the book to your reader?
Also, you can consider some information about the author and the circumstances of the texts production:
- Who is the author? Nationality, political persuasion, training, intellectual interests, personal history, and historical context may provide crucial details about how a work takes
shape.
- What is the documents genre? Out of what field does it emerge? Does it conform to or depart from the conventions of its genre? These questions can provide a historical or
literary standard on which to base your evaluations.
Example
University of Minnesota.
Eng 3027, Advanced Expository Writing.
Literacies and ELT

Yamith Jos Fandio

August, 2016

Facultad de Ciencias de la Educacin

Licenciatura en Lengua Castellana, Ingls y Francs

Review of "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS".

Petter Woll.
Introduction and summary
The use of condoms to prevent unwanted pregnancies and, even more important, the spread of sexual transmitted diseases (STDs) has been controversial. This critical
review examines an article that links condom usage to the spread of AIDS. The article, "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS," was written by Anthony Zimmerman, a
Catholic priest. As the title of the article indicates, the author is against the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS and other STDs. Although the author has some good
points, his article is biased and contains some misinterpretation of data from others analysis of the effectiveness of the condom.
In his article, Zimmerman says that using a condom is like playing Russian roulette with AIDS. There are two reasons why condom usage will increase the spread of AIDS.
Firstly, the promotion of condoms by the authorities, like teachers and health workers, increases sexual promiscuity. This leads to miseducation of adolescents, breaking down their
natural and cultural barriers against sex before marriage. Secondly, condom usage promotes a false sense of security and a pseudo-responsibility.
Critical assessment
The main purpose for the article is to abolish the promotion of condom use in the society. Zimmerman argues for this by saying that the promotion of condom usage will
increase sexual immorality: that is, more sex before marriage. If people are more frequently exposed to sex, they will have sex earlier in adolescence, compared to if they are
exposed less frequently. Exposure increases the risk of acquiring HIV and, thus, developing AIDS. The other reason why condom usage will increase the spread of AIDS is that it
leads to a false sense of security and something the author calls pseudo-responsibility. This situation misleads ordinarily people to think that all sex is safe, and therefore it increases
their sexual behavior. The implication of the authors arguments is that to reduce the spread of AIDS and avoid a future catastrophe having the same devastating effects as the
black plague in Europe on the 14thcentury, promotion of condom use must be stopped.
Despite of his effort to use arguments, Zimmerman has a very moralistic view on sexuality that is not compatible with the publics view. The trend today is that young
people start having sex earlier than before. Also, there are few people who wait to have sex until they are married. On the other hand, the view on condoms in the sphere of public
health is that they are our best means of reducing the spread of sexual transmitted infections like HIV. In one study that looked at the transmission rate among heterosexual partners
with one partner infected by HIV, among the 123 couples that consistently used condoms, none of the partners became infected, whereas 12 of the 122 who didnt consistently use
condoms became infected.
Evaluation and conclusion
Firstly, the authors arguments appear to be biased towards his Christian beliefs. He is a Catholic priest and has a very moralistic view of sex. In his opinion, sex before
marriage is immoral. A minority in the American population would support this kind of view. His views on sexuality are, in short, not consistent with current views within the population.
Another negative point about this article is that it is very argumentative with little support. The author throws out statements, giving no evidence or supporting details for them. This
is bad writing, and the author loses his creditability. Finally, he misinterprets information from other data and gives the wrong information or only parts of the truth.
In conclusion, the results of this critical review shows that the arguments in the article show the presence of bias, prejudice, argumentative writing without supporting
details, and misinformation. These points weaken the authors arguments and reduce his credibility. As a result, I advise readers to look for other more solid and articulate documents.
References
The Writing Center (2015). Book reviews. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Retrieved from http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/book-reviews/
Writing for college (2013). Chapter 30. Critical review. Retrieved from http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jewel001/CollegeWriting/WRITEREAD/CritReview/samples.htm#Two

Literacies and ELT

Yamith Jos Fandio

August, 2016

Facultad de Ciencias de la Educacin

Licenciatura en Lengua Castellana, Ingls y Francs
READING REVIEW FORMAT
INSTITUTION:
COURSE:
REVIEW OF:
STUDENTS() NAME(S):
STUDENTS() CODE NUMBER(S):
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION

Literacies and ELT

Yamith Jos Fandio

August, 2016