LANG 1403

Unit 2 Lesson 4 – Academic blogs (2) Writing a critique

Lesson outcomes:
 Apply principles of what makes a good written summary and
critique
 Construct a topic sentence and supporting sentences to
communicate a paragraph’s thesis and progression of ideas
 Use attributive tags and reporting verbs to differentiate your
own voice from a source author’s voice

Activity 1 – Reflection on summary writing

Reflect on your takeaways from analyzing the good and poor summary samples before class
and how they compared to your own summary writing before class. Discuss with your partner
three things you want to keep in mind for the next time you need to write a summary.

Activity 2 – Practice: constructing a topic sentence

Being able to construct a thesis (a concise description of the main argument/point/purpose)
and topic sentence is essential for most types of writing (e.g., reports, proposals, essays, journal
articles, blogs, etc.).
A topic sentence for a summary: To write a topic sentence in your summary, you need to select
the right ideas from the source. All the subsequent sentences of your paragraph should support
this topic sentence. To do this effectively, you need to have a clear idea of the overall ideas and
purpose of the source. The thesis (main point) of the source should be communicated in this
topic sentence, as seen in the underlined parts of following examples:

Topic sentence for Source A:

The 2014 article, “Why you are already a natural learner: Growing dendrites,” by Zadina,
Smilkstein, Daiek, and Anter, discusses insights into how the brain learns over time and
changes in life.

Topic sentence for Source B:

BioMed Central’s article, posted in 2017 with the title “Improving students’ academic
performance – there’s an app for that” reports on interesting research findings that
indicate an app that makes use of leaderboards and digital badges could positively impact
on the academic performance, engagement and memory of students.

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A topic sentence for a critique: Today we focus on constructing a topic sentence for a critique of
a source (an analysis and evaluation of the source and its ideas). Follow the steps below:
1. Analyse and evaluate the article at the end of this document titled “Improving students’
academic performance – there’s an app for that”. Annotate 3 specific parts of the text
with a brief note to demonstrate your personal reflection/evaluation on the point.

2. Discuss your overall impression of the source/ideas with groupmates and try to justify
your opinion. Try to agree on a general thesis which communicates your group’s overall
evaluation/critique (not summary) of the source/ideas.

3. Write one sentence together to communicate your group’s thesis, using a

neutral/academic writing style.

Activity 3 – Practice: writing a critique paragraph

With your group, write the rest of your critique paragraph. Imagine this paragraph is part of an
academic blog post aiming to share research with peers.
Use the tips below to help you.

Tips for Coherence (CO)

 Make sure each sentence logically supports the thesis of your topic sentence.
 You might include comments about the usefulness or relevance of particular ideas
and the trustworthiness of the source.
 Use language to show the organization of ideas and connections between ideas.
 Use attributive tags and reporting verbs if needed to help distinguish between the
authors’ ideas and your own ideas.

Go back to U2L2 and U2L3 for notes, if needed.

OPTIONAL – Useful language for writing critiques:

These points raise questions for me about…

The author’s point about … calls to mind…
Even though this source…., it still…
Evaluating this from the point of view of…,

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Activity 4 – Evaluation and Reflection

Share your group’s writing with another group and evaluate your peers’ writing:
1. Do you agree with your peers’ opinion of the source?
2. How effective is their topic sentence? Does it clearly communicate the thesis of their
paragraph?
3. Is it clear which ideas come from the source author and which ideas come from your
peers?
4. Identify one specific thing you particularly like in your peers’ coherence (CO).
5. Identify one specific suggestion for something to change in your peers’ coherence (CO).

Today’s topic supports the development of coherence (CO). Read about this below and
evaluate your skills.

Core Area for Learning: Coherence (CO)

Coherence enhances your communication by enabling the audience to better understand

the ideas expressed in your language because the flow of ideas is logical and connected
from one point to the next.

In this course, to develop your skills with Coherence, we will focus on:
 Developing logical ideas through a written and spoken text
 Building strong paragraphs with well supported and organized ideas
 Ensuring ideas are well linked in written and spoken text
 Organizing ideas in a summary, critique and synthesis
 Signposting/signally language to help indicate the structure of a text

Next lesson

U2L5 is an in-class peer evaluation session on your W1 assignment (academic blog practice).
Make sure to follow your teacher's instructions to submit a complete W1 draft. You will receive
comments and suggestions for improvements from your classmates in the next class. Also, your
teacher will offer feedback on your draft, which will help you develop your W1 into W2, an
assessed assignment.

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Appendix: Reading text for U2L4

Science News
from research organizations
Improving students' academic performance
-- there's an app for that
Date: August 3, 2017

Source: BioMed Central

(1) A mobile learning app that uses game elements such as leaderboards and
digital badges may have positive effects on student academic performance,
engagement, and retention, according to a study published in the open
access International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education .
Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia developed a fully
customizable app that allowed lecturers to push quizzes based on course
content directly to their students' devices in order to motivate them, increase
their competitiveness, and keep them engaged with the course.

(2) The researchers found a positive correlation between performing well on

app tasks and achieving higher academic grades. App users on average
achieved marks that were 7.03% higher compared to students who chose not to
use the app. When the app was first introduced in the 2nd semester of 2015,
student retention improved by just over 12% compared with the previous
semester.

(3) Dr Ekaterina Pechenkina, the corresponding author said: "Evidence-based

research into student engagement tells us that well-engaged students are less
likely to drop out. Our results imply that students are willing to use learning
apps and that performing highly on the app may predict their future academic
success."

(4) Dr Pechenkina added: "Most studies into the use of mobile apps as learning
tools in higher education primarily focus on apps designed to address one main
aspect of the learning process, such as collaboration or motivation. We
developed our app to achieve multiple goals, including improving engagement
and measuring academic performance. In order to do that, we designed the app
to include multiple-choice quizzes, push notifications, digital leaderboards and
badges."

(5) To prompt students to test their knowledge of the concepts introduced

during a course, the app delivered quizzes directly to the students' mobile
devices. Push notifications alerted students each time a new quiz became
available. Based on app engagement, various data was collected through the
app's analytics function, such as the speed at which students responded to quiz

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prompts and the number of attempts it took them to get an answer right. For
each correct answer, students were assigned points which were collected in a
leaderboard.

(6) Dr Pechenkina said: "At a time when students' demand for personalized
education is growing, mobile apps could allow students to access course
material whenever they choose. Game elements like leaderboards and digital
badges generate feedback, allowing students to see how they are performing
compared to their peers. Taking advantage of mobile app technologies in this
way could help lecturers reach out to their students and keep them interested
in the course content."

(7) 394 students were recruited to test the app. Students were all enrolled in
the first-year accounting or science units at Swinburne University in Semester
2, 2015. Lecturers tailored the content of the app to fit their specific course.

(8) Dr Pechenkina said: "We were surprised to find that when analysed
separately, the app's positive impact for the science cohort was significantly
lower than for the accounting cohort, suggesting there are some interesting
cohort-specific dynamics worth exploring further."

(9) The authors point out that the initial success of the app may have been
partly the result of a novelty effect, which could mean that the app's perceived
usefulness may decline with longer-term use. The fact that students could
choose to use the app may have led to sampling bias, as more conscientious
students who were open to new experiences may have been more likely to be
included in the experiment. The authors also caution that while they observed a
positive correlation between students' scoring highly on the app and achieving
higher academic grades, any causal relationship between the two needs further
investigation.

Story Source:
Materials provided by BioMed Central. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.

References
Pechenkina, E., Laurence, D., Oates, G., Eldridge, D., & Hunter, D. (2017). Using a gamified mobile
app to increase student engagement, retention and academic achievement. International Journal
of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0069-
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