Writing Article Review

How to Write a Review Essay

Always plan what to write before writing.

A review refers to a critical analysis of a place, a book, an article, a movie an event or an object. In a review the author seeks to pass her evaluation concerning the item under review. The review can be written as part of school coursework or a newspaper article. For whichever reason the review is being written, there are general guidelines that can be followed when writing a review.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Read, the article to be reviewed. As you read the article, have a pen and notebook to jot down your thoughts. Ask yourself some questions that will act as the base for your review. According to the Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, some of the questions that you can ask yourself are: What is the idea behind the book or article? Does the content compare with the topic of the article? Does the author give evidence for his argument? Consider the author, what is her authority in the matter?

Develop a thesis for your review. This is the main idea of the review. In thesis development, consider the desired end result. Are the readers more interested in the article author's work or is it a quest for your opinion?

Start with an introduction that gives a background to the work. Give the title of the article, the author and the date of its publication. Also include the context you are using to write your review. For instance, you may review an article on immigration policies in America in relation to the war on terrorism or the socio-economic status of the immigrants' home countries.

Write a short summary of the content of the article under review. Give a brief description of the article. The length of the summary is mainly dictated upon by the whole length of the essay. As a general guideline the summary should not take more than half the length of the paper. Jim Robinson, a mentor at the Empire State College in New York, said you should ideally divide your essay into three parts the summary, interpretation and a conclusion. Get the main points of the article and put them in this section.

Detail your reaction to the article. Divide this part into paragraphs that deal with different aspects. The Writing Center says that you do not have to follow a chronological order of the aspects as they occur in the item under review. You can give comparison to other similar literature. Avoid including quotations. When you quote ensure that you reference the page of the quote.

Write the conclusion which is an inclusion of the summary and the evaluation. Robinson said that you should show a brief comparison between the author's work and your interpretation of it. Do not include any new evidence. Summarize the article's strengths and weaknesses.

How to Write Academic Literature Reviews

By Jennifer L. Potts, eHow Contributor updated: April 27, 2011

Sample Of Article Review

Article: Teaching Grammar with Fun Learning Games

Teaching English grammar can be hard going - for the teacher and the students. It doesn't have to be difficult or painful, however. You can teach English grammar using fun learning games and before you know it your students will be more than willing. How does it work? You ask. Well, there has been a movement away from the traditional methods of teaching English grammar through writing, rewriting and worksheets to using a more active approach through games. Researchers have also begun to look at how and why these new methods work.

Four sound reasons to teach grammar with games

1. Arif Saricoban and Esen Metin, authors of "Songs, Verse and Games for Teaching Grammar" explain how and why games work for teaching grammar in an ESL classroom. They say, "Games and problem-solving activities, which are task-based and have a purpose beyond the production of correct speech, are the examples of the most preferable communicative activities." They go on to explain that grammar games help children not only gain knowledge but be able to apply and use that learning.

2. Additionally, games have the advantage of allowing the students to "practice and internalize vocabulary, grammar and structures extensively." They can do this because students are often more motivated to play games than they are to do desk work. Plus, during the game, the students are focused on the activity and end up absorbing the language subconsciously. One can also add that fun learning games usually contain repetition, which allows the language to stick.

3. While games are motivating for the students, probably the best reason, according to Saricoban and Metin, to use games is that "the use of such activities both increases the cooperation and competition in the classroom." One can use games to add excitement through competition or games which create bonding among students and teacher.

4. Aydan Ersoz, author of "Six Games for the ESL/EFL Classroom" also explains more reasons why games do work for teaching grammar. Learning a language requires constant effort and that can be tiring. Ersoz says games can counter this as because:

* Games that are amusing and challenging are highly motivating.

* Games allow meaningful use of the language in context.

Children are more motivated to learn grammar with games

The theory of intrinsic motivation also gives some insight as to why teaching grammar through games actually works. Intrinsic motivation refers to the internal factors that encourage us to do something. Most young learners will not internally decide that they want to learn grammar. They don't yet understand the concepts of why it's important to know proper grammar, so these external factors won't affect them much either. Instead, intrinsic motivation can lead encourage them to play games. If these games are good then they will be learning while they are playing.

Using some movement is crucial because movement helps activate the students' mental capacities and stimulate neural networks, thus promoting learning and retention. If you have a large class with no space you still have options. Children can stand up, sit down, move various body parts and pass things around to each other. Movement does not only mean children tearing around the playground.

What Kinds of Games Work Best?

When you are looking for games to use in your classroom, don't just pick something to be a "time filler" which does not have a definite linguistic outcome. These games may entertain the students, but when you don't have much time with them each day as it is, you want your game to do double duty to get the most out of the time you spend playing games.

Have a clear linguistic outcome for each game. The game can be a listening game to allow the students to repeatedly hear a new grammatical structure in use, or it can be a speaking game to allow practice of the grammar once it has been absorbed through listening beforehand. There are degrees of difficulty with speaking games from basic repetition in a fun context to more creative sentence creation for revision or more advanced practice once the basics have been mastered. The teacher should lead the children through this progression so that the game at hand is always well within the grasp of the students. This makes games fun rather than laborious. It is a mistake to play a speaking game immediately after the new grammar has been presented. Ideally reading, spelling and writing games come after the new grammar has been absorbed and the students can use it orally.

Another thing to watch out for with grammar games is that a maximum of students are involved simultaneously. If you have thirty children you want to avoid a game where only one child is speaking at a time. What are the other twenty-nine children supposed to do in the meantime other than get bored? On the other end of the scale however are games that cause chaos in class and make teachers unpopular with colleagues because of high noise levels. A variety of suitable games are available for you to try free in the resource box below the article.

Now you can stop the eye-rolling and complaining from your students when you even THINK about teaching them a grammar lesson, and have some productive fun. Article from http://www.english-4kids.com/articles/teachgrammar.html.

Shelley Vernon has helped 1000s of teachers be an inspiration to their pupils and achieve results 2x as fast. Improve the effectiveness of your lessons by up to 80%. Receive free English language games now on http://www.teachingenglishgames.com

Article after being reviewed.

Article Review: Teaching Grammar with Fun Learning Games.

English grammar is one of the important subjects for teaching English. The traditional methods of teaching grammar such as writing, listening, reading and speaking is still applicable and useful but the new methods of using games as the tool of English teaching lesson for grammar is very useful for the teacher to achieve their objective while the student can learn more than before. Teaching English grammar with game is an active approach that can deliver the objective more to the student and the researchers is currently analyzing how and why this new method work. The article is adapted from Shelly Vernon website title of teaching English with games. Publish at http://www.english-4kids.com/articles/teachgrammar.html. 

The article is about teaching grammar with fun learning games whereby it was a new method of teaching used by teacher in America nowadays. The traditional methods of teaching English grammar such as writing and rewriting are being moved slowly to let the new methods of teaching grammar with games being adapted as new skill of teaching English grammar for young students.  In the article the author give the four reasons why these methods really work, evidence, arguments and suggestion to support her idea. Firstly we look at the author four reasons why teaching English with games really work. Games and problem solving is the most important way of communicative activity that can deliver the student to gain knowledge, apply it and use the learning iven. This statement is from Arif Saricoban and Esen Metin the author of “Songs, Verse and Games for Teaching Grammar. It explains how and why games work for teaching grammar in ESL classroom. 

The second reason is games can allow the student to practice and internalize vocabulary, games and structure extensively. Student is more motivated to play games compare with desk work. The student will focus on the games activity and ends up with absorbing the language subconsciously. The repetition of games can allow the language to stick as the ends result. The uses of such activities both increase the cooperation and competition in the classroom. Using games can add excitement through competition or games that create bonding among teacher and student. This is the third reason why games is important in teaching English grammar stated by Arif Saricoban and Esen Metin. According to Aydan Ersoz, author of “Six Games for the ESL/EFL Classroom” learning a language requires constant effort that really tiring for the teacher and student can be solved by using games as the tool of teaching. To support this Aydan stated that, games are amusing and challenging are highly motivating. Games also allow meaningful use of language in context. This evidence support the teaching of grammar with fun learning games and was the fourth reason why this method is really useful to teach English grammar with fun learning games.

The author of the article supports her reason by giving strong evidence to support her main idea. She profess that “Children are more motivate to learn grammar with games”. The theory of intrinsic motivation which indicates the internal factors that encourage us to do something is can be apply through learning grammar with fun games. The student may not internally like to study grammar because they did not know the important of learning this lesson but if the learning is support with good game, they may learn while they are playing. In the games, movement should be included because of it can helps to activate the students’ mental capacities and stimulate neural networks, thus promoting learning and retention.  The author also said that, if you had large class with no space you still have option. Movements does not only mean children learning around the play ground but the children can stand up, sit down, move various body parts and pass thing around each other. 

The article also stated that the suggestion made by the author. Her suggestion is “what kinds of games work best” and clearly explains on her article. The choosing of games is not just “time filler” but must consist of linguistic outcome. These games may take more time to spend and you will not have enough time while your student playing the games.  Every game must have linguistic outcome. The games can be listening which allow the student to repeatedly hear a new grammatical structure in use, or it can be a speaking game to allow practice of the grammar once it has been observed through listening beforehand. There are degrees of difficulty with speaking games from basic repetition in a fun context to more creative sentence creation for revision or more advanced practice once the basics have been mastered. The teacher should lead the children through this progression so that the game at hand is always well within the grasp of the students. The games must be fun not tiring the student. The author also said that, it is a mistake to play a speaking game immediately after the new grammar has been presented. Ideally reading, spelling and writing games come after the new grammar is absorbed and the students can use it orally. The maximum number of the student also needs to be considering before playing any games. Although learning grammar with fun games is really useful but it will make the teacher unpopular among his or her colleagues because of the high noise level during the lesson conducted.

As for the conclusion, learning grammar with is effective when putting games as the mechanism tools for teaching English grammar in school. Although it can boost up the student knowledge but the traditional methods of teaching grammar is still applicable. Reading, speaking, writing and listening is still widely use around the world nowadays. I’m perfectly sure that this new methods of teaching grammar can slowly be adaptable and replace the traditional method of teaching grammar. As an educational practitioner, all types of method of teaching grammar can be use as long as it can deliver the lesson objective and goals. A teacher should implement different types of methods everyday so that the student may not get bored with lesson given by the teacher. Teacher endure a lot of responsibility to full fill the requirement for the society and the government to create good human being and we as the citizen of Malaysia will continuing helping them.

Originally review by:

Harry George KPLI (SR) BI/SN/MO 1

16 May 2011.