NGLISH

for
ACADEMIC and
PROFESSIONAL

Prepared by:
P URPOSES
SESSION 2
DepEd ROV
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ACADEMIC and PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES

RITING
THE REACTION/
REVIEW/CRITIQUE
PAPER
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English for Academic and
Professional Purposes
EACTION PAPERS, WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
REVIEWS & CRITIQUES CRITIQUES

THESE ARE SPECIALIZED FORMS OF WRITING IN WHICH A REVIEWER OR

READER EVALUATES ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
• a scholarly work (e.g. academic books and articles)
• a work of art (e.g. performance art, play, dance, sports, film,
exhibits)
• designs (e.g. industrial designs, furniture, fashion design)
• graphic designs (e.g. posters, billboards, commercials, and digital
media)

• usually range in length from 250-750 words.

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English for Academic and
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EACTION PAPERS, WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
REVIEWS & CRITIQUES CRITIQUES

• not simply summaries but are critical assessments, analyses or

evaluation of different works.
• reviewers do not simply rely on mere opinions; rather, they use
both proofs and logical reasoning to substantiate their comments.
• understanding the difference between fact and opinion.
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FACT OR OPINION?
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English for Academic and
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ACT VS. OPINION WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
CRITIQUES

FACT
Facts are statements that can be proven.
Facts may be true or false.
But facts can be proven.
Examples
1. Statistically, women live longer than men.
2. Most buses weigh more than most cars.
3. There are ten inches in a foot (false).
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English for Academic and
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ACT VS. OPINION WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
CRITIQUES

OPINION
Opinions are statements that cannot be proven.
Opinions can be argued.
Opinions may be supported with facts.
Opinions cannot be proven.
Examples
1. Golf is boring.
2. Pizza is delicious.
3. Math is the hardest subject.
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The Family Guy is not appropriate to watch during school.

OPINION
2
There are fewer panda bears in the world than grizzly bears.

FACT
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Why do we need to
discuss fact and
opinion in this part
of the subject?
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GROUP 2
GROUP 3
GROUP 4
GROUP 5
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English for Academic and
Professional Purposes
RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

LITERARY CRITICISM
• A disciplined activity that attempts to study, analyze, interpret and
evaluate work of art.

• The reader and the text transact or interact, creating meaning, for
meaning does not exist either solely within the reader’s mind or solely
within the text. (Rosenblatt)

• These critical approaches or standpoints by which you can analyze and

critique a certain material.

Bressler, Charles E. (1994) Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and

Practice
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English for Academic and
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

EXAMPLES
• New Criticism/Formalism
• Reader Response Criticism • Eco-Criticism (STEM)
• Structuralism
• Feminist Criticism • Sensory Analysis (BPP/Cookery)
• Marxism
• New Historicism • Assessment (Other TVL courses)

•These critical approaches

may be used by GAS students
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English for Academic and
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

NEW CRITICISM/FORMALISM
• Formalism – examination of the work itself and not its historical context
or biographical elements.

• A poem can be analyzed to discover its true or correct meaning

independent of its author’s intention or emotional state, or the values and
beliefs of either its author or its reader.

• Proponents: T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards

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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

NEW CRITICISM/FORMALISM
Methodology:
• Believing in the thematic and structural unity of a poem, new critics
begin their search for meaning within the text’s structure by finding the
tensions and conflicts that are eventually resolved into a harmonious
whole.
• Poetic diction often has multiple meanings and can immediately set up
series of tensions in a poem.
• Many words have both a denotation (dictionary meaning) and a
connotation (implied meaning).
• These two may be in direct conflict with one another.
• This tension or conflict is called ambiguity.
• All these activities must be resolved.
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English for Academic and
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

Sample FORMALIST Critique of Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez

The title of the work already gives an idea as to what it means. In
Physics, it is stated that the light and energy of the stars have to travel light
years to reach us. Since they are millions of miles away and light has to
travel this large distance, it is highly possible that the star has already
exploded while its light is still travelling towards us. Therefore it is possible
that a bright light we see at night actually comes from a dead star. In the
story, this metaphor is used to refer to Alfredo’s love for Julia., a woman he
meets and falls for one fateful summer.
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English for Academic and
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

Sample FORMALIST Critique of Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez

“He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the
stone steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias,
through the little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now
opening, now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side
by madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.

The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose
wide, open porches he could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled
tamarinds in the Martinez yard.”
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English for Academic and
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

READER RESPONSE CRITICISM

• This is concerned with the viewer’s reaction as an audience of a
work.
• This allows for so much diversity in theory and methods, many
twentieth –century schools of criticism declare their membership in
this broad classification.
• This may be divided into three groups/methodologies:

FIRST GROUP: Structuralism Approach (TEXT EMPHASIS)

SECOND GROUP: Phenomenological Approach (READER+TEXT)

THIRD GROUP: READER EMPHASIS

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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

READER RESPONSE CRITICISM

READER EMPHASIS
• The reader’s thoughts, beliefs and experiences play a greater part in
shaping a work.
• Proponents: Norman Holland and David Bleich

“Young Goodman Brown” and Me

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” evoked strong negative

emotions from me. Finding a basis for my reactions in my past
experiences with my father, I dislike the harsh depiction of “religious”
people and, by implication, God; and I identify with the character
Goodman Brown, but by story’s end reject that identification.
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

STRUCTURALISM
• There are so many methodologies for this literary approach.

• It emphasizes form and structure , not actual content.

• How texts mean, not what texts mean, is the chief interest.
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRITIQUE CRITIQUES

STRUCTURALISM
• Claude Levi Strauss

• Myth has a structure like language

• Mythemes are the recurrent themes or basic structures of a

myth.

• Out of the structural pattern will come the myth’s meaning.

• ROLES: Hero, Villain, Helper, Dispatcher, False Hero

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STRUCTURALISM
• Narratology by Vladimir Propp
• How a story’s meaning develops from its overall structure.

• Propp investigated on fairy tales and found 31 fixed elements

that will occur in sequence

• Initial situation; complication; combat cycle; reward cycle

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STRUCTURALISM
• Jonathan Culler
• The voice of structuralism who presented a theory of reading.
• He introduced the binary oppositions (light/dark; good/evil)
• How the reader organizes the various binary oppositions found
in the text but is already existing in the mind of the reader will
determine the interpretation of the text.

• WHAT ARE THE BINARY OPPOSITES IN DR. JEKYLL AND MR

HYDE? IN HARRY POTTER?
• CAN YOU IDENTIFY SOME LITERARY WORKS WITH BINARY
OPPOSITES?
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRTIQUE CRITIQUES

FEMINIST CRITICISM
• FEMINISM focuses on how literature presents women as subjects of
socio-political, psychological and economic expression.

• It also reveals how aspects of our culture are patriarchal.

• When using feminism, look into how gender equality (or lack of it) is
presented in the text.
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
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FEMINIST CRITICISM
• GYNOCRITICISM’S 4 AREAS OF INVESTIGATION:
• Images of female body in a text
• Female language
• Female psyche
• Culture

“There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and whipped the
tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture was something of eager
freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face was not notably
pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality,
an achievement of the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind and
body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to charm.”
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRTIQUE CRITIQUES

FEMINIST CRITICISM
“Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to
spend Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and
a house on the beach. Carmen also came with her four energetic children.
She and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the
preparation of the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of
their husbands--how Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that
he would not even take time off to accompany her on this visit to her
father; how Doña Adela's Dionisio was the most absentminded of men,
sometimes going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.”

–Dead Stars
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRTIQUE CRITIQUES

FEMINIST CRITICISM
The story is a study of power imbalance brought about by gender. In the
beginning, Dead Stars already clearly illustrates the gender roles ingrained
in Filipino society: Don Julian and the judge are portayed as the male
leaders of the household, taking up lofty professions such as business and
law while the women are portrayed accomplishing domestic tasks such as
tending to the children and preparing food. The most note-worthy display
of imbalance in power, however, lies on the central theme of Alfredo’s love
for Julia as simply a dead star.
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRTIQUE CRITIQUES

FEMINIST CRITICISM
Eight years after their forbidden love and after getting married to another
woman, Alfredo still holds Julia as an object of affection, thus creating a
distance between him and his wife, Esperanza. In their relationship as a
wedded couple, the power lies in Alfredo, not only because patriarchal
society designates him as the head of the household, but also because he
remains he remains unreachable to his wife by harboring feelings for
another woman. Moreover, the realization that his love for Julia is simply
a dead star is brought about by his treatment of Julia as simply an illusion
and an object of affection, and not as a woman. This gender imbalance
leads to a tragic epiphany for the characters , but is also a reflection of
how men are viewed to dominate not only in the household but also in
their relationship with women.
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
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FEMINIST CRITICISM
• GUIDE QUESTIONS:
• Is the author male or female?
• Is the author narrated by a male or a female?
• What type of roles do women have in the text?
• What are the attitudes towards women held by male
characters?
• Is feminine imagery used?
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
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MARXIST CRITICISM
• This is concerned with differences between economic classes and
implications of a capitalist system (working class vs. elite)

• Look into the social class as represented in the work; social class of
the writer; social class of the characters.

• The study of literature and the study of society are intricately bound
together.
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PAPER, REVIEWS &
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NEW HISTORICISM
• Assumes that language shapes and is shaped by the culture that
uses it.

• A text is like any other social discourse that interacts with its culture
to produce meaning; it is a social production.

• Author+Text+Reader

• APPLY THIS IN CIRILO BAUTISTA’S SONG OF THE TEARGASSED MAN

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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRTIQUE CRITIQUES

ECO-CRITICISM
• The study of representations of nature in literary works and of the
relationship between literature and the environment.
• The term was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay “Literature
and Ecology: An experiment in Ecocriticism.”
• David Mazel: “…the analysis of literature as though nature mattered.”
• Focus on “green” issues.
• Ecocritics began arguing that in the context of ongoing global environmental
crisis, everything you do has some effect, good or bad, on the situation.
• Cheryll Glotfelty: “the study of the relationship between literature and
physical environment.”
• Ecocritics are driven by issues and questions rather than guided by a single
method
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RITICAL APPROACHES IN WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
WRITING A CRTIQUE CRITIQUES

ECO-CRITICISM
Guide Questions:
• How does this literary work represent nature?
• How do its metaphors and symbolisms suggest an opinion about the land?
• Does the work value the nature or technology?

Buell suggested that works specifically with environmental orientation ---

sometimes called “green literature” --- include the following qualities:
• Nature is not just the background but an active presence, illustrating the
interaction between human and non-human.
• Humans should be seen as accountable to the environment.
• Nature should be seen as a process not simply as a static element of the
world.
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REACT ON WHAT YOU SEE

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Why do we need to
write a book review?
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English for Academic and
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RINCIPLES OF WRITING WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
AN EFFECTIVE CRITIQUES
REACTION PAPER
• Read the article or watch the film or observe the
work of art
• Take down notes.
• Evaluate the work.
• State what you like and what you don’t like.
• Know what you think and why you think it.
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English for Academic and
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TRUCTURE of the WRITING THE REACTION
PAPER, REVIEWS &
CRITIQUE PAPER CRITIQUES

INTRODUCTION
• Basic details
• Title, director/artist/writer, etc.
PLOT SUMMARY/DESCRIPTION
• Gist/simple description of the work
ANALYSIS/INTERPRETATION
• Employ critical approach here
• Use guide questions here:
• What aspects of the work make you think it is a success or failure?
• Does the work remind you of other things you have experienced?
CONCLUSION/EVALUATION
• Reinforcement of the main assessment
• Comparison to a similar work
• Recommendation of the material (if you like it)
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READING
ACADEMIC TEXTS

Other Suggested Activities

• Film Review
• Critiquing Commercials/TV Ads
• Broadcasting, jingle, dramatization
etc.