REFLECTION

Unit 7: Producing and Evaluating Critical Writing: Part 1

The format started too changed for this unit as it is the Stage 2 for this course. For this unit, the texts are more academic and require greater independence of understanding from us. Besides that, in this unit also we have been introduced to some examples of critical reviews and how to comment the reviews. This unit has developed a little bit more of our skills to produce and evaluate critical writing. And by the end of this course we should be master the skills.

To add in the information, this unit also involves a practice text reading, a sample of a critical review, and a commentary explaining the features of this review.

An article title, “Dieting: a waist is a terrible thing to mind” is the only article provided for this topic. As we are exposed to the ways of reviewing critical writing, we used this article to give us some guide line as we are preparing to clear up our next assignment. Example of a critical review on the topic dieting has been provided in the book. And so, we have understood better on how to write a good critical review based on the example. Not to be forgotten is the example of commentary on “Critical review of ‘Dieting’”.

And so, to start our critical review assignment, our lecturer, Sir Humam, had asked us to find an article to be critical review by ourselves. And so, I have found an article on “Martyr without a Cause”, comes from ‘TIME’ magazine, which was dated on January 14, 2008, by William Dalrymple. The article is about Bhutto’s death and its connection with the failure of her leadership in Pakistan. In other words, it covers about the event that can be described as useless for her death. This include about the corruption of her leadership.

This is something new and interesting for me as I have to read and criticize someone’s article and make a review from it.

Zahidah, Syafinaz and Mariam have present on this topic. They explained how the example article is easy to understand by informing us about the subtopic provided in the article that makes it easier to locate the main idea. Thus, make it lots easier to understand their presentation. These are the sub-topic that have been explained by them; are you overweight? ,myths of overweight, the demographics of dieting, the Oprah effect, yo-yo dieting, bulimia and natural weight, the right treatment, diet pills, overweight vs. dieting: the health damage, depression and dieting, the bottom line, the bottom line, advice to the overweight, and a word to professional.