Critique

and
Revisions
Outline
• Pre-writing review
• Following guidelines
• Why critique?
• Why revise?
• Common errors
Review - Technical Comm - March 15
Lecture
• Function
• Clarity
• Coherence
• Completeness
See Module 1 of Comm 12 prepared by Prof. Ubas
• Language Read Chapter 1 of Markel, M. (2012). Technical communication (10th ed.). Bedford/St.
Martin’s. pp. 2-16

• Style
• Consistency of Use
 Review - General Outline - September 27
Lecture
What is this about? Why shoud I read
it? Why should I be interested? Intro/Hook

Which aspects of the material will I

Discussion highlight?
Why those over others?

Are the formal qualities of the What are the issues raised by the
art work good? Are they artwork? Is it done in a realistic
entertaining? Why or why not? Formal Extra-Formal manner? Why or why not? How
What is their immediate effect does the artwork approach those
on you as an audience? issues (theme)?

So what? Were you able to expand What does the artwork say about the social
the discussion of this artwork and the Conclusion context from where it has emerged? Does it
aim to challenge or maintain the status quo?
issues it raised?
Following Guidelines
• Instructions are part of the test
• Should be read before and after
you write
• Be conscious of deadlines
• Citation style and plagiarism
• Word count as guide
• Formating rules
• Inferring based on the rubrics
Rubrics
• Always arbitrary
• Open ended
• Room for style
• First draft
• 15 points for personal opinions,
• 15 points for expanding concepts,
• 5 point for grammar and
composition
• Final draft
• Grammar and composition
• Formatting rules
Why critique? (peer review)
• A basic foundation of knowledge
production or scientific method
• A good method for deeper
understanding and appreciation
of a given article
• Great exercise for doing related
review, practice in paraphrasing
and precis, and training in
articulating your own ideas
• Fun
How to critique?
• Remember that critique is
highlighting both strenghts and
weakness
• Ang puno't dulo or the end all is
the article. Don't make it about
you or something else.
• Give reasonable and actionable
comments, avoid impressionistic
or unsubstanciated claims
Guide Questions
• CLARITY - Is the title clear? Are the objectives clear? Are sections of the
text clear? If not, how can they be improved?
• MIS/INTERPRETATION or LOGIC - Are the arguments backed by
evidence? Is the logical flow smooth? Could other interpretations exist?
• RELEVANCE - Are there sections in the text that could be removed?
Why? Are the RRL chosen good or enough? What suggestions can you
make?
• AUTHORIAL STANCE - What assumptions does the author have? Do you
share these ideas? Why or why not? Are there cases of overemphasis or
underemphasis? What directions could future research take?
Why revise?
• Another pair of eyes (editor,
reviewer, proofreader, etc)
• Do you need to follow all
revisions? NO
• BUT institutional reasons dictate
revisions (need to be published,
pass the class, etc)
• No 'final form'
Common Errors
• Picking a title
• Opening paragraph
• Expanding Concepts (EC)
• Personal Opinion (PO)
• Grammar and Composition (GC)
Title
• Should be written last
• Sometimes written by someone else
(editor)
• Shoud give readers a gist of what
the essay is about
• Provide context, include name of
the material/s
• Witty or creative (bonus)
• Could be reasonably long, and
subtitles are allowed (for techical
writing)
Examples - Titles
• Then and Now: The Fading Image of Press Freedom
• The Fading Image of Press Freedom: Remembrances and Commitment in
Portraits of Mosquito Press (JL Burgos, 2015)

• WE Forum to Malaya: Battling State-Sponsored Glorified News for

Genuine Press Freedom in Portraits of Mosquito Press (JL Burgos,2015)
• Battling The Crony Press in Portraits of Mosquito Press (JL Burgos,2015)
Examples - Titles
• The Cleaners: A Reflection Paper
• Labor and Ethics in The Cleaners (Moritz Riesewieck & Hans Block,
2018)

• Beauty Queens and Heroes Without a Cape: Battling Against Life’s

Challenges
• Resilience and Dignity in Sunday Beauty Queen (Baby Ruth
Villarama, 2016)
Good Examples
• The Slave Academy: Romanticization of Domestic Helpers in Overseas
(Sung-A Yoon, 2019)

• The Fatal Bite of the ‘Mosquito Press’

Opening paragraph
• Should have a hook, to capture
attention
• relevant anecdote
• context
• direct to the point
• Make readers say 'I should keep
going'
• Introduces the material
• Thesis statement and methods
Examples - Opening Paragraph (direct to the
point)
When the oppressor tries to alter history, the muffled voices of
the oppressed intensifies. The 2016 documentary, Forbidden
Memory by Gutierrez Mangansakan II, shows the narratives from the
survivors of the Palimbang Massacre where the Armed Forces of the
Philippines slaughtered around 1,500 Muslim locals of the villages of
Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat on September 24, 1974. President
Ferdinand Marcos' response to the rapidly growing Moro separatists in
Mindanao. Although it may be one of the bloodiest, most gruesome
crimes of the late dictator, it seems to have somehow been forgotten,
even regarded as an invented story by the direct perpetrators, the
military (Enrile, 2018, as cited in MindaNews, 2018).
Examples - Opening Paragraph (anecdote)
In an anonymous high-rise building in Metro Manila, a group of people
called “Content Moderators or Internet Cleaners” are the ones who block or
prohibit content that does not follow the community guidelines of a certain
social media application. They are in charge of monitoring and moderating
user-generated material and ensuring that nothing questionable is put online.
They stop cyber bullying, child exploitation, and even identify terrorism with
just a single click on a software. Content moderators are dominant in the
Philippines since the minimum wage of workers in the Philippines are low.

Notes: Actually a second paragraph, doesn't even mention the essay is going to be about a
film
Examples - Opening Paragraph (context)
With the prevalent use of technology in this age, people become more
connected than ever. Social media platforms are now the avenue for
communication and sharing content, compared to the 19th century, where
communication was mostly limited to letters and telephone. As more and more
people from different walks of life participate in this activity, the posted contents
become more diverse. Due to this, there becomes a tendency where certain posts
that deviate from social norms emerge. The Cleaners (2018) is a documentary
directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck. It is about the life of content
moderators, dubbed as "cleaners", whose jobs it is to ignore or remove posts that
are harmful, malicious, negatively triggering, or anything that violates a social
media platform’s community guidelines. In the documentary, filmmakers interview
former content moderators from an anonymous agency in Manila, tech company
workers, journalists, and people affected by content deletion.
Expanding Concepts (EC)
• Always support arguments with
concepts
• If possible, cite sources and data
• Be critical with concepts (why are
they good? why are they bad?)
• Avoid (sweeping) generalizations
and abstractions
Examples - Expanding Concepts (EC)
• Overseas Filipino Workers such as domestic helpers are considered by some to be
their heroes. In particular ways, they are. For their families, they are. Life is never
fair and it was proven in this film. However, how we face and deal with it is what
makes us different from each other. Sunday Beauty Queen has shown that even
just for a day we could still find a way to seek ourselves when it seems that we
are lost already, a Filipino character indeed.
• Suggested revision: Overseas Filipino Workers such as domestic helpers are
considered to be heroes. The state facilitates the export of labor in order to
decrease local unempoyment rate and get revenue from remittances sent home
to families. These migrants workers live precarious lives, often subject to abuse
and lacking legal support. Sunday Beauty Queen has shown that even just for a
day they could still find a way to amuse themselves and enjoy dignity that they
are deprived of.
Examples - Expanding Concepts (EC)
• On one occasion, when Marcos was asked what he was going to do
with his critics who were getting very noisy, he just said “I am not
bothered by the mosquito press.” He thought they were just going to
give tiny harmless mosquito bites and that he could easily swat these
mosquitoes. However, the mosquito press proved him wrong. While
the mainstream press was only publishing “the true, the good, and
the beautiful” about the Marcoses
• Suggested revision: The mainstream press, better tagged as the crony
press, is made up of close Marcos corporate allies. They only publish
the so called achievements of the regime, adhering to Imelda's
dictum 'the true, the good, and the beautiful.'
Examples - Expanding Concepts (EC)
• The Defense Minister of Marcos dictatorship, Juan Ponce Enrile, is one of those who denied
and debunked the human rights violations that happened during Marcos’s era. The aged,
turncoat politician must love to play Judas at Filipino dining tables and distort history for his
insatiable greed for power and robbed wealth. Other than that, Rigoberto Tiglao, a columnist
of The Manila Times, wrote an article that the Malisbong massacre was just a hoax. According
to him, it was propaganda spread by the ‘yellows’, and as the first-ever journalist, in 1999, to
cover the MILF, none of the townspeople talked about the Malisbong massacre. Yet, the
victims’ families were recognized by the Philippine Government, and the Commission on
Human Rights (CHR) Chairperson Loretta Ann Rosales in 2014 personally visited the village and
the mosque where the brutal act happened. Just this September 24, 2021, the 47th
Anniversary of the dark past of the Palimbang massacre was commemorated. In contrast to
the devious claims of Enrile and Tiglao, one with a proper mind and empathetic heart could
feel the sincerity and painful truth in the eyes of the interviewed victims. They were scared to
tell the story, given that it was not even pleasant to look back. After all, it was a lifetime trauma
not only for the actual victims but for the succeeding generations of Malisbong.
• (very good paragraph!)
Personal Opinion (PO)
• Always take a stand
• Don't try to please everybody, it's
impossible
• Don't be drowned by data
• What is your contribution to the
conversation?
• Important in forming your own
style
Examples - Personal Opinion (PO)
• Personally, Marcos’s apologists are the worst to encounter in my social media at the
moment. My blood boils every time I see one, however, this made me reflect on the
privileges I enjoy. I know that I feel this way because I learned in university about the Martial
Law Regime of Marcos and that this is a dark part of our history. I am privileged enough to
have an education that encourages critical thinking and not just absorbing contents of books
and agreeing with it. I have family members that are pro-Marcoses and base on what I see
on their posts defending them, it is due to little of education about our history, exposure to
fake news with inability to check facts and reliable information, and the lack of awareness
that this “golden age” was only felt by few and most of them are the allies of Marcoses. They
think this way because they are not privileged enough to have the same education I am
enjoying now. On the other hand, there are also people who have a good education and
have access to factual information but still choose to be blind about the Marcoses’ atrocities.
I believe that it all still boils down to privileges. They are privileged enough not to care and
be affected by acts of Marcoses.
• Notes: Unfocused. Strong opinion without basis or anchor. Could be deleted.
Examples - Personal Opinion (PO)
• Overall, this documentary is a must-watch as it serves as an eye-
opener of the forbidden memories during the Marcos regime. Now
that I am one of those who have the opportunity to witness this
documentary, it is now my responsibility to amplify the voices behind
these stories as so justice to be served. As one of the survivors tells it:
“Remembering is such a sorrowful act”, however, as long as we fight
for these causes and we serve its purpose, the untold horrors of the
Marcoses will never be forgotten.
Notes: Very good!
Grammar and Composition (GC)
• How are the ideas organized? It is
precise or redundant?
• Basic spelling and grammar
errors are allowed in the first
draft only.
• One of the most frequent error is
writing run on sentences.
• too much info
• hard to focus
Example - confusing, without context
• The title was catching and intriguing, but the film's concept was also
fresh and unique. I was only able to watch it twice because I couldn't
move on from it. From a brief background, the film revolves around
five women whose real-life stories while working in a foreign land
could be deemed similar to that of Cinderella's life before she became
a princess. Except those women's lives were far more magic and with
no assurance of having a happy ending.

Notes: always provide contexts

Example - too much detail & drowned by
data (PO)
• So when, how, and why did such job exists in the first place? Because to be honest there is no
domestic helper violence without domestic helpers existing, and apparently, it all comes down
to history. Around three decades ago, President Ferdinand Marcos pushed Filipinos to find
work in foreign nations via The Labor Code of 1974, which enabled contracting and
subcontracting, in search of hard currency and an outlet for a rapidly rising population
(Rappler.com, 2019). This movement became more prevalent as more Filipinos work in other
countries to escape poverty, unemployment, and lack of prospects in their home country over
the years.
• Why has the Philippines remained relatively poor amidst everything? Evidently, political
dynasties, bribery and corruption and citizens who vote with their hearts rather than their
heads are bringing our country and people deeper into economic abyss. As a result,
approximately 10% of our population is forced to work in another country to support
themselves and despite the billions of dollars they send home, they become hostages in the
nations where they labor (Yap, 2013).
• Suggestion: Delete highlighted parts. Relate the data to the material, the movie.