Effective Writing Center (EWC)

Welcome

Chapter Links:

Appendix Links:

Online Guide to Writing and Research

Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies and Writing Patterns

Critical Strategies and Writing

Evaluation

Evaluation is the most complex of all analytical strategies and uses many of the other analytical techniques. In applying this strategy, you first establish the criteria you will use to evaluate your subject, apply them to the specific parts of the subject you are judging, and draw conclusions about whether your subject meets those criteria. In the process of evaluating a subject, you will usually be called upon to render some analysis and synthesis and even use persuasive or argumentative techniques. In humanities and literature courses, you may write evaluations of art, literature, drama, and music. In communications classes, you may evaluate user manuals, technical reports, or business proposals. In management classes, you may evaluate particular management techniques and their effectiveness in organizations of a certain size. In each case, the process is the same: first, establish the evaluation criteria; select what characteristics you will apply those criteria to; evaluate how well the selected characteristics meet the criteria; and present your results, along with examples, to support your premise.

Report broken links or any other problems on this page to writingcenter@umuc.edu. Be sure to include the title of the chapter and section in your e-mail.

Print Entire chapter

Print this Section