Whether you're an English major or just completing your college requirements, knowing how to write a critical essay will give you an edge throughout your academic and professional careers. Writing critical essays enables you to develop critical skills including close and careful reading, technical research, scholarly writing, referencing and proofreading. Learning these techniques will help you enter into academic conversations and gain tools to think and communicate in more profound ways.
Steps
1. 1
Learn your paper topic as soon as possible to help plan your research.
2. 2
Find research information from a wide variety of sources including journal articles, books, encyclopedias, and news sources. Gather more information than you expect to actually reference when writing your paper, but don't gather too much this can distract from the main point and you will end up putting it in your essay simply for the reason you researched it. Do not use wikipedia for everything, and do not copy and paste peoples replies; no matter what website you got it from, plagiarism will be found out.
3. 3
Skim through your sources to separate the interesting research from the irrelevant material. Interesting research can be from books, york notes, and published critical essays on your specific topic. otherwise don't research things that aren't relevant ie. researching witches when your question is on monarchy
4. 4
Reread the relevant material thoroughly and critically.
1. Highlight, underline, or otherwise mark any journal articles or books you own. Use different color post-it notes to direct your attention to critical details from library books.
2. Summarize or otherwise annotate each source after you've read it. Note a few important details and the source's main argument for future reference.
5. 5
Brainstorm a thesis by reviewing your