A Critique is a piece that evaluates a literary work. In a critique you must not only state your judgements of a work, but you must also defend those judgements. Do not get discouraged because you feel you are not knowledgeable enough to evaluate another's work. Everybody is capable of evaluating a piece of work based on their own individual knowledge, experiences and established criteria for good writing and for different types of literature.

Here are some points to consider when critically evaluating a literary work:

• Identify what the author is trying to accomplish in the work. What is the assignment, topic or motivation behind his writing what he wrote?

• After establishing what the author was trying to accomplish, decide if this goal has been achieved.

• Review the historical, social, and cultural background or context for the literary work so you can better understand what the piece is about.

• Depending on the length of the paper you are writing, you may need to decide on a specific point in the text to which to respond.

• Is the work unified? Do all the parts of the work relate to or are they centered around a main, coherent theme? Do all the parts relate to each other? If not, is unity perhaps not a necessary part of this work? Why not?

• Does the author take a definitive stance about an issue?

• Identify the main points in the work and then analyze if they need to be explained more or less fully. Are any of the points not necessary, confusing or boring?

• Make note of particular passages and words which seem to be most effective or ineffective sentences in conveying the theme, tone, characters' personalities, etc.

• What is the tone of the work( the author's attitude towards the characters and actions) and why do you think she may adopt that kind of tone?

• What are the overall main strengths and weaknesses of the work? Don't forget to indentify the criteria on which you base your evaluations.

This list can not only be used when critically evaluating another work, but is also a good list by which to check your own work. Before turning in a paper, it is a good idea to run through this list to make sure that your paper would stand up to some other person's critical evaluation (such as your instructor's!).

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