1)
Who
is/are the author/s? What are his/her credentials?
2)
What
is stated in the abstract? Is there a clear statement of definition, purpose
and scope?
3)
Define
or identify the author’s premise or general area of concern so as to provide an
appropriate context for your critical review of the article. Who is the
intended audience for the work?
4)
What
is the scope of the work of the article? Is the study quantitative, qualitative
or a combination of qualitative and quantitative or a literature review?
5)
What is the main research question or purpose of the
project?
6)
Is the approach linguistic, cognitive, literary,
sociological, psychological? Does it integrate various aspects of more than one
discipline?
7)
What hypotheses/explanations have been put forward by others?
Is their validity being questioned?
8)
Whether the project is based on observational work,
interviews, case studies, data from a corpus, it needs to be underpinned by
some theory or model. Has this been done satisfactorily?
9)
If this is a case study, briefly provide an overview of
the case, the parties involved, and any relevant circumstances.
Analysis
10) Research on your own at least two authors
who are cited in the text. Describe their major contributions to the field. Do
they represent divergent as well as supportive views? Why do you think the
author/s chose them?
11) Did the author/s indicate trends in what
has already been published about the topic? Has there been controversy
regarding the area under investigation? Are there any identified gaps in the
field?
12) What is the methodology used? Describe.
13) What are the data? Describe.
14) How are data analyzed?
15) Describe the synthesis (combination, blend)
of the data.
16)
Were established theories or models challenged by the new
data?
Conclusion
17) What are the findings? Are the findings
contributing to the field of knowledge on the topic? Do the findings relate to
the abstract?
18) Are there implications stated for further
research? What are they?
Personal
Observations
19) Why did you select this piece for critical
review? Did the work speak to you in a positive, negative or neutral way?
Explain.
20) Do you consider the work to be based on
facts or supposition (belief or opinion)? How do you know this? Do you consider
the author to be objective or do you detect bias in the approach? Give
evidence.
21) Would you recommend this work to other
classmates and/or forensic linguists? Why or why not?