Book Review
All students are required to write a brief critical review of John McWhorter’s new book The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language.
REVIEW PARAMETERS:
Recommended length: 5–6 pages
Format: typed, double-spaced, title and section headings, 1-inch margins, 12-point text, 10-point footnotes. Make sure pages are numbered and don’t forget to include your name!
Style: Since this is not a writing course, you are free to choose your own preferred style for expository writing, but be consistent. (A standard manual for the social sciences is The Chicago Manual of Style and for the humanities is MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.) Regardless, the review should be carefully structured and citations should be properly acknowledged. English should be literate. The more you proofread and edit, the better it will be get. Be precise, concise, clear, and persuasive!
Here is some info on writing a review:
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/book_reviews.shtml
However, I expect something far more substantive than the exemplar provided.
Here are some of my own thoughts about possible content:
Present what you see as the most important conclusions of the book. Begin by stating the questions being addressed. Explain the author’s arguments and any new contributions being made. Lastly, discuss what conceptual or empirical problems the author might face.
A good review will consist of two parts. The first part of the review should summarize the main points of the work under review, and the second part should evaluate the work.
Reviews should answer the following kinds of questions:
What is the book about? What are the basic issues addressed?
What is the perspective of the author? What assumptions are being made and what exactly is being argued?
What previous interpretations and analyses of the phenomenon at hand are presented?
What evidence does the book provide to support or change some aspects of previous discussions?
What is the primary contribution of the book?
How well is it argued?
What are the strongest positive aspects of the book? What does they reveal about the nature of the phenomena under investigation?
What are the weakest aspects of the book? What, if anything, could be done to strengthen them?
What further questions does the book lead to? What is left unresolved?
GRADING:
15 points content:
your coverage of the issues in the book
your ability to connect them to other ideas and the course material
the strength of your argumentation
5 points form:
overall organization (how well you structure those ideas into a coherent whole)
clarity of presentation (how easily your critical review reads)
style (how carefully you craft that whole into a polished review)
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