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Critical Thinking and Writing: Critical Writing and Argumentation

Overview

Common feedback from lecturers is that students' writing is too descriptive, not showing enough criticality: "too descriptive", "not supported by enough evidence", "unbalanced", "not enough critical analysis". This guide provides the foundations of critical writing along with some useful techniques to assist you in strengthening this skill. 

Key features of critical writing

Key features in critical writing include:

  • Refusing to simply accept and agree with other writers - you should show criticality towards other's works and evaluate their arguments, questioning if their supporting evidence holds up, if they show any biases, whether they have considered alternative perspectives, and how their arguments fit into the wider dialogue/debate taking place in their field. 
  • Presenting an argument that indicates an unbiased view supported by good evidence and fair consideration of counter-arguments that may show an alternative perspective on the subject.
  • Recognizing the limitations of your evidence, argument and conclusion and therefore indicating where further research is needed.

Structuring Your Writing to Express Criticality

In order to be considered critical, academic writing must go beyond being merely descriptive. Whilst you may have some descriptive writing in your assignments to clarify terms or provide background information, it is important for the majority of your assignment to provide analysis and evaluation. 

Description:

Define clearly what you are talking about, introduce a topic.

Analysis:

Analysis literally means to break down something into its components to better understand it. However, there is much more to analysis: you may at times need to examine and explain how the parts fit into a whole; give reasons; compare and contrast different elements; show your understanding of relationships. Analysis is, to much extent, context and subject specific.

Here are some possible analytical questions:

  • What are the constituent elements of something?
  • How do the elements interact?
  • What can be grouped together? What does grouping reveal?
  • How does this compare and contrast with something else?
  • What are the causes (factors) of something?
  • What are the implications of something?
  • How is this influenced by different external areas, such as the economy, society etc (e.g. SWOT, PESTEL analysis)?
  • Does it happen all the time? When? Where?
  • What other factors play a role? What is absent/missing?
  • What other perspectives should we consider?
  • What if? What are the alternatives?

With analysis you challenge the “received knowledge” and your own your assumptions.

Evaluation: 

  • Identify strengths and weaknesses. 
  • Assess the evidence, methodology, argument etc. presented in a source. 
  • Judge the success or failure of something, its implications and/or value.
  • Draw conclusions from your material, make judgments about it, and relate it to the question asked. 
  • Express "mini-arguments" on the issues your raise and analyse throughout your work. (See box Your Argument.)
  • Express an overarching argument on the topic of your research. (See Your Argument.)

Tip: Try to include a bit of description, analysis and evaluation in every paragraph. Writing strong paragraphs can help, as it reminds you to conclude each paragraph drawing a conclusion. However, you may also intersperse the analysis with evaluation, within the development of the paragraph. You may also find out that some parts of your work contain more description, analysis or evaluation. This could also be an effective way of structuring your critical text.

Argumentation

Presenting and defending an argument, with reasons and evidence, is a main expectation (and assessment criterion) of most essays and other forms of assessments, including dissertations. With argumentation you demonstrate critical thinking as you can draw conclusions and take a position you can defend on a topic.

What is an argument? In academic writing, an argument is the reason or set of reasons that demonstrate the validity of a thesis statement.

The view that you defend is called a thesis statement. 

To write an effective argument, you will need to provide the following:

  1. Thesis statement (preferably stated in the introduction, e.g., this essay argues that...)
  2. Evidence in the form of literature, data, research findings etc.
  3. Logic: the thesis statement must be supported logically by the evidence.
  4. Consideration of counter-arguments
  5. You can present concessions to counter-arguments, but should reject their key points with your evidence/reasoning.
  6. Careful language
    1. Confident whenever possible
    2. Cautious, qualifying, hedging, when there are uncertainties and limitations

For more guidance on argumentation see page Argument and Criticality in the essay writing guide. 

Useful resources

Learning Development, University of Plymouth (2010). Critical Thinking. University of Plymouth. Available from https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/uploads/production/document/path/1/1710/Critical_Thinking.pdf [Accessed 16 January 2020].

Student Learning Development, University of Leicester (no date). Questions to ask about your level of critical writing. University of Leicester. Available from https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/writing/questions-to-ask/questions-to-ask-about-your-level-of-critical-writing [Accessed 16 January 2020].

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