how to write an article review apa style

how to write an article review apa style

How to write an effective article review in APA style

1. Introduction to article reviews

If you must begin an article review, which usually follows the same format as writing an essay, try writing paragraph summaries for each section of the article to ensure that you understand what the author intended. It is important that you constantly assess your comprehension of the article to ensure that you are writing a review that will relay what you understood to the potential reader.

In an article review, you will usually need to begin by providing the citation of the article you are reviewing. You will then have to follow a format (example: APA style) to cite the article. At the end, you will write the article review using the quotes from the article.

An article review is a piece of writing where you summarize and assess someone else’s article. The goal of composing an article review is to assist the reader in deciding whether to access the article itself. Generally, an article review will contain an outline of the article, a portion about how the article fits into its field, and a discussion about whether the article will succeed or fail within that field. An article review is more than a summary and analysis; it is an article where you very much need to express your impression and contention that you think is noteworthy. You can try to do this using a few quotes from the article you are reviewing.

2. Understanding the APA style guidelines

In providing research article critiques, it is important to begin the review with the title page, the title of the article, and the name of the author. Following the title page is the abstract of the article. When reading the abstract, try to envision what the article is reporting, and whether the data that the article provides is data that is pertinent in answering the research question. The introduction of the article appears to be slightly different in comparison to other research article critiques because just prior to writing this critique a presentation on the 6+1 Writing Traits occurred. While analyzing the introduction it seemed to be best categorized under the trait Voice. The introduction does well to set a good subject to write about and does a good job relating to the reader, “Research has demonstrated that teaching overt letter recognition…” It seems that a good understanding of APA guidelines has been used to reword that the old method was not as effective as the new one. This may or may not hold true. An overt word recognition is practiced in a construct determined by the orthography being overt; therefore a comparison method should only utilize the same form of word recognition to be compared against. This sentence may have been written with the intent on convincing the reader that a certain method is better, while appearing to not make an honest comparison. The article states a null hypothesis in comparing two teaching methods. This may seem to deviate from the desired focus of comparing the two different types of word recognition, and may bear confusion because understanding this method required revisiting this section. At this point of the article the analysis can be ended in a recommendation for the introduction to create a focused comparison of the two word recognition methods, to in turn avoid potential confusion with what the methods are. The introduction does well in voice, but because it may not exist a comparison of methods, it may be too convincing in setting a focus to compare the two meaning recognitions. The purpose of the methods section is to provide record of how a study was conducted with little interpretation. The voice trait disappears well before this point of the article, thus an evaluation of the introduction under voice is sufficient.

3. Structuring your article review

A critical review of a journal article is an evaluation of the article’s strengths, validity, and how to write a good article review is a question which bothers many students? And the answer is to follow a solid article review format that really you are going to use. If you are writing an article review for a class, you will likely have a set of further guidelines that you should build your review around. Reports, one of the most common types of writing, are of the most useful tools available when recommending how an article could be improved. For an article review your structure should start with the citation of the article, to which you should add your Introduction, Summary, critique, and finally your better. Paragraph one should be the beginning to your review. It should also contain the article’s title, author, journal title, publication date, and any other relevant information about the article. A good way to start is with a quote from the beginning of the article or a summary of a section so you can then compare your just to the author’s (paraphrase). This paragraph is aimed to give the reader an idea of what will be illustrated in the review. The second paragraph should be the summary of the article. This will mentioning the author’s most important points. It is key to make this section; mentioning only specific ideas from the article and helping to guidance to avoid using your own just at points in this paragraph. This can often be the thin line between an article summary and an analysis, what can be the common problem for many students.

4. Analyzing and evaluating the article

The very heart of a critique, analysis, and evaluation actually has to be able to determine the article’s contribution to the field. This is possible only if the article is non-descriptive (rare for a beginner’s paper) and the author has had to think while writing. Thinking is as cognitive a process as reading, writing, or any other. It is clear that the author has had to be doing the thinking. An article which is stating what something is like may have necessitated no more thought than what the article is, leaving little for the reader to build upon. A ‘how to’ article may be explaining the results of thinking, still leaving little for the reader to engage in the cognitive process. As yet the reader may be doing no more than the author did. That is not to say that thinking articles and those which describe are not useful. Often the aim of a piece of research is to put the matter beyond doubt. A cognitive process can be highly complex and there may be only one correct solution. A subject which has a wealth of opinion behind it may also have to be tackled from an observational stance. Any research might not be conclusive and research into the same matter might have to vary in method many times. All research, however, needs to be built upon. A cognitive process takes place when new knowledge is being related to in order to discern if it fits and descriptive results become the product of successful thought or research into something else. Rebuilding is possible with anything observed or measured, as experimental or observational results can always be recounted. Cognitive processes are too vast to mention all here and thinking is not exclusive to the scientific method, but it is clear that an article which offers something to build on has a far higher potential for impact. High-impact articles are often those which have challenged previous findings (negative or positive) of others. It has been said that research is an attempt to force a new pattern on the chaos of the world. Articles which have introduced methodology also have high potential impact as it is hoped that the method has, or will be repeated. The first step of the evaluation is to abstract the article. This is possible by making a list of the descriptive words in the article or by asking what, when, or where about the article. This will check for any overlap with the descriptive/observational writing mentioned above. If the article is thoughts alone, this may be a bad sign. If the piece is trying to force a new pattern, then there will be something that it intends to refer to; some gap in knowledge. Ideally, it will be known what the article was comparing to and an experimental article should have a hypothesis from the author. If there is no comparison to a specific other thing, then it may not be clear what the article intended to do. All this will make the article easier to relate to something before assessing the future impact of the article on that related thing.

5. Crafting a persuasive and well-written review

The difficulty is in striking a balance between maintaining an unbiased perspective while forming a personal opinion. While article review is a separate analysis compared to an article itself, it should still exhibit the same skills of an objective opinion on a subject. Your goal is to persuade the reader through the force of your argument, not the force of your language. Thus, a well-written article review will exhibit a balanced perspective using a polite and unemotional tone. This may take on a variety of forms such as comparing the article to a newly read article or historically sampled article. At all times, the tone of the review should reflect the objective of the article. It is helpful to also provide information on how the article is written. Presenting the article in question to other students and asking them to answer a concise question based on the article is an easy way to receive feedback on the relative work presented. In this case, you can use that feedback as data and show if the article is or is not effective in conveying the intended message. Next, the article review should identify the areas of the article which can yield additional clarification or support. This can be done directly by labeling the section “areas which may need improvement,” or indirectly by using a quote from the article and then commenting on the quality of that quote. It is a good idea to make these points while still using the article’s perspective. In other words, ascertain how and if the article in question tried to fulfill its purpose. If you can identify the article’s purpose and still believe the article is inconclusive, then you have a valid point as to an area in need of improvement.