How to Write a Review

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This article was co-written by Rachel Scoggins, PhD. Rachel Scoggins is an Assistant Professor of English at Lander University. Rachel’s work has been presented at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association and the Georgia International Conference on Literary Information. She received her PhD in Literary Studies from Georgia State University in 2016.

There are 7 references cited in this article that you can see at the bottom of the page.

This article has been viewed 115,759 times.

To write a review, you need to analyze the work and make comments associated with it. In academia, this exercise is common: it requires thorough reading, research, and writing skills. The instructions below will assist you in this task.

Table of Contents

Draft and read actively

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Understand the purpose of the review. Reviews are assigned so that you can think carefully about how you feel or think about the work after you finish reading it. ^{[1] X Sources of Research} When writing a review, you need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the work, whether the work has achieved its goals, and how well it has done. Speech is more than just an opinion piece. ^{[2] X Research Source} To write a review, you need to read the work carefully to understand its hidden meaning. You must state your feelings about the implications, further clarify, evaluate and analyze the author’s goals and main points of view. In many cases, you can use the first person pronoun “I” when writing your review. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

In your review, you need to connect ideas, paragraphs, and overarching concepts and use evidence from the work itself to support your points. If asked to agree or disagree with the author’s point of view, you need convincing evidence as to why you feel that way. ^{[4] X Research Sources}
If you need to write reviews about multiple works, you need to analyze how they relate to each other. If you’re writing a review for a piece of work, perhaps you should relate it to the overarching concepts and topics discussed in class.
You may be assigned to write reviews for movies, speeches, field trips, lab hours, or even class discussions. ^{[5] X Research Sources}
Reviews are not a summary of a work. It’s also not saying “I like this book because it’s interesting” or “I hate it because it’s boring”. ^{[6] X Research Sources}

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Determine the requirements of the assignment. Before you start writing, you must determine exactly what the teacher is asking of you. Some teachers will want you to analyze or evaluate the work. Others want a personal review. Make sure you know the type of review you need to write.

If you are unsure, you can ask your teacher to clarify what they expect from your work.
You may be asked to write a review of this work in connection with other works. In that case, you should use quotes from both works for your article.
You may be asked to write a review of a piece of work in relation to the topics discussed in class. For example, in the case of reading a book in the Sociology of Gender Roles, you should read, take notes, and write comments based on how gender roles are presented in this book.
You may be asked to express your personal feelings about a piece of work. Though less common, sometimes teachers just want to know if you’ve read the work and what you think about it. In this case, you should focus on your view of the work.

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Read the work as soon as it is assigned. Writing a review isn’t just about reading, commenting, and submitting. Reviews need to synthesize pieces of text, which means you have to take the information you have read and link them together so that you can analyze and evaluate. You need to take the time to read and, more importantly, to absorb what you’ve just read in order to put ideas together. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

One of the biggest mistakes students often make is waiting until the last minute to read and write: feeling is deeply contemplative after reading it over and over again.
You should reread the work a few times. For the first time, read and familiarize yourself with the work. Next time, start thinking about your proposition and how you feel.

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Write down your initial impressions. After your first reading, write down your first impressions of the work. Do the same for every subsequent reading.

Try to complete some of the following sentences after reading: I think…, I see that…, I feel…, It seems… , or In my opinion… ^{[8] X Research Sources}

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Take notes while reading. As you reread the work, take notes. Taking notes in the margins allows you to easily find the citation, plot, character development, or feel for the work. If you don’t take careful notes, you’ll have a much harder time writing a cohesive review.

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Ask questions while reading. As you read, you must begin to question the work. This is the starting point of your assessment and feelings. Some questions to consider include:

What is the author referring to?
What is the author’s main argument?
What arguments and assumptions does the author make and how have they been supported?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the piece? Where is the problem related to this topic?
How are the works linked together? (If writing reviews about many works)
How do these ideas connect to the overall idea of the class/unit/etc? ^{[9] X Research Source}

Draft essay

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Free writing. Start by free-writing a review and evaluation of the author’s ideas. Try to put into words what you think the author is trying to do and whether or not you agree with the author. Next, ask yourself and explain why you think that way. Freelance writing is a great way to start putting your ideas on paper and get past the initial deadlock. ^{[10] X Research Source}

When you’re done, re-read what you just wrote. Identify your best and most convincing feelings. Prioritize your arguments.

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Decide your perspective. Reviews must be critical and contain some rating for the work. Otherwise, it will just be a mere summary. After your freelance writing is done, determine what your point of view is. You need to keep asking that question to yourself as you draft your sticky feeling.

Think of why the author wrote this article or story the way they did. Why do they arrange things in this particular way? How does it relate to the outside world? ^{[11] X Research Source}

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Define your thesis. Now that you’ve drafted and found perspective, you can turn them into reasoning. What interesting thing do you need to say about the work you just read? Start by explaining why what you say is interesting and important. This is the core of the review. Combine all of your points, opinions, and comments into one claim that you can substantiate. That is your thesis.

A thesis is a sentence that explains what you are going to analyze, critique, or try to prove about the work. Thanks to it, your review will not go astray.

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Sort posts. The essay should follow the basic format of the essay. It should have an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Each paragraph in the body should directly support the thesis. The body paragraphs should express how you feel about each different part of the piece. Organize your feelings into a few general themes so you can translate them into paragraphs.

For example, if you’re writing an opinion on a theme in your work, you could divide the paragraphs into sections that state whether the setting, main antagonists, and metaphors in the work succeeded or failed. failed to convey the theme of the work.

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Collect citations. After you’ve organized your ideas into paragraphs, you need to find citations that support your point. All claims must be substantiated by work. Look in the notes section to find citations that support your thesis.

Draft introductory paragraphs that quote, analyze, and critique them. ^{[12] X Research Source}

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Sort paragraphs. Paragraphs should begin with the topic sentence. Next, you must determine how to organize your paragraphs. You can start with what the author wrote, followed by your feelings. Or you can start with the author, then state how you disagree. In general, here you should start with the author first. Next is your opinion. ^{[13] X Research Source}

An effective way to think about paragraph organization is: detail, examples/quotes, critique/review, repetition.

Write the final draft

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Write an introduction. The opening of the article should include the name of the work, the author and the focus of your article. In some cases, you should include the year of publication and the publication from which the work is derived, if relevant. You should also include the subject of the work and the author’s intent in this section.

The thesis should be placed at the end of the introduction.

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Re-read the testimonials to make sure you’ve made your point. Although most reviews do not specifically ask for personal opinions, you should still critique, analyze and evaluate the work instead of just focusing on the arguments.

Find places where you simply report what the author has written instead of commenting or evaluating it.

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Explain the deeper implications of the work for the class, the author, the reader, or yourself. Connecting the work to other ideas discussed in class is a good way to analyze and evaluate it. Compare the work with other works, authors, themes, and eras.

If the topic requires a personal opinion, the conclusion is probably the best place to do that. Some teachers will allow you to include your own opinion in the body of the essay. However, do not forget to reconfirm with the teacher before doing so.

Advice

When certain arguments are not strong enough, look for holes in the work or suggest counter-arguments.
After reading, don’t wait too long to write. You may forget important details.
Reviews are not autobiographical. It’s not about how you feel, how you would be in that situation, or how you relate to your life. ^{[14] X Research Source}
Always check the format the teacher has assigned.

Steps

Draft and read actively

Draft essay

Write the final draft

Advice

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