Assignment Task:
Summary of the Article Critique Paper:
Each student will select one article from a credible news source (e.g. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, etc.) or scholarly journal (e.g. American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, etc) in which to present. Wikipedia is not a credible source!! Students will then prepare a 2-3 page (typed & double-spaced) critique of the contents. Note: Anything less than 2 complete pages will be penalized points. In addition, the cover page and work cited page DO NOT count as part of the page count. If you wish to provide additional sources of information, please cite the source and include it on your work cited page. Articles have to relate with government somehow (war, policy, right-to-die, etc.).
Successful Critique Papers: In order to do extremely well on this assignment, you need to make sure to critique the author and how he/she conveyed the information. Do not simply write a summary of the article or critique the topic itself. Your main purpose is to critique the author's presentation of logic, facts, reason, analysis, stance, etc. Though you can briefly critique the topic in your conclusion, at least ninety percent of the entire paper should be the critique of the author. See the article critique examples from former students and handout below. Those who follow these specific instructions, examples, and handouts will do extremely well on this assignment. In addition, do not speak in first person (or using "I"), as it presents your work more in the form of an unsupported opinion.
In addition, when you open the Article Critique examples (below), you will see that some of the text is in bold. The text that you see in bold is a critique. You will see text in bold throughout the entire papers in order to give you a good idea on what an actual critique should look like. The final draft that you submit to me should have plenty of critiques throughout in order to score well. You do not need to bold your text (or critiques) throughout your paper. I simply provided the examples with the text in bold to show you the critiques. Lastly, make sure to thoroughly read the handouts below, especially the one that pertains to the formatting for all papers. Students who do not follow the formatting guidelines usually do not score well on the papers.