Week 10

WEEK 10
STRATEGIES IN CRITICAL WRITING
Experienced writers showcase flexibility in achieving their objectives by constantly

exploring and discovering styles, procedures, and ideas. They are not afraid to ask
questions and question their own writing for a more balanced output. After all, writing is
all about thinking.
Only after the writer thoroughly examines the subject through writing and is satisfied
with the ideas discovered, does he or she polish the writing for the reader. This is where
the writer starts deciding on the style and organization to be used depending on the
target readers and the nature of the text. This is where the writer also decides which
critical strategies to use for writing the final draft.
Critical thinking yields several strategies that you are likely to use in academic writing.
Many of your writing assignments may reflect just one of the strategies or a combination
of them.
For the sake of clarity, these strategies have been arranged in the order of complexity of
the critical thinking that they require. Keep in mind that these strategies often overlap
with each other. You may use comparison and contrast when you are synthesizing
information, but you may also synthesize the results of a causal analysis. You may also
use several of these analytical strategies when you write an evaluation.
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Strategies in Critical Writing
Analysis
Analysis, the basis of many other strategies, is the process of breaking something into
its parts and putting the parts back together so that you can better understand the
whole.
When you seek to explain the causes and effects of a situation, event or action, you are
trying to identify their origins and understand their results. You may discover a chain of
events that explain the causes and effects. How you decide where the boundaries of
causal analysis are depends on your thesis and your purpose for writing.
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Synthesis
Synthesis is a tad more complex than the analytical strategies that have just been
discussed. In synthesizing information, you must bring together all your opinions and
researched evidences in support of your thesis. You integrate the relevant facts,
statistics, expert opinions, and whatever can directly be observed with your own opinion
and conclusions to persuade your audience that your thesis is correct. Indeed, you use
synthesis in supporting a thesis and assembling a paper.
The example below shows the writer synthesizing his ideas about how prejudices and
cultural orientation transform voice as a writer at different stages of the writing process.
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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.
 establish the evaluation criteria

 select the characteristics you will apply those criteria to
 evaluate how well the selected characteristics meet the criteria
 present your results, along with examples, to support your premise
Persuasion
Persuasion is aimed at changing the beliefs or opinions of the readers or at encouraging

them to accept the credibility or possibility of your opinion or belief. You do not have to
convince them to embrace and adapt to your own opinions and beliefs offhand,
although that is more preferential. Rather, you have to convince them to consider you
by keeping an open mind.
At some level, all writing has a persuasive element. You may simply be persuading your
reader to continue reading your writing or even to accept your credibility—that you know
your subject area. In fiction writing, you persuade your readers to believe your plot and
dialogues, enough for them to finish the story down to the last chapter.
You can make your writing persuasive by responding to the needs and demands of your
readers. When you keep them in mind, you can identify with their points of view and
attitudes. Use your style and tone to show respect for your reader. Offer your reader
arguments and evidences to support your opinion or belief.
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Week 10 - Strategies in Critical Writing

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STRATEGIES IN CRITICAL WRITING

Experienced writers showcase flexibility in achieving their objectives by constantly

 establish the evaluation criteria

Persuasion is aimed at changing the beliefs or opinions of the readers or at encouraging

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