How to Write a Review?

What is a Review?

A review is a formal assessment, evaluation and appraisal of a product, event, service, research paper, a piece of creative work, a book or magazine, painting or poetry, a play or an album, a hotel or airline service, tourist location, a club or a sport activity. In fact anything can be reviewed formally and reviews are usually short, although can vary widely, with some being very short conversational reviews and some are more elaborate, academic and analytical reviews. University research students are familiar with literature reviews. In a research study, a literature review is an essential part of a thesis or paper as it helps the researcher to collect and present background information available on the research topic. Literature review is appraisal and evaluation of all information already available in a topic. This may be presented in a descriptive or analytical manner. Book reviews are published in magazines and newspapers and are detailed critique or analysis of a book and its content, story and approach. In an elaborate review, all aspects of a product or article are considered. For instance, travel magazines publish elaborate reviews of hotels, tourist spots, destinations and holiday activities. A review is meant to inform the readers about the worth or value of a product or service.

What is the purpose of a Review?

The purpose of a review is to provide background or relevant available information about a topic or subject, an article or a product, or an area of study. Just as a literature review forms the basis of a research study, a book review is meant to provide the relevant information about a book and its author. Similarly, a product review will give all details that help other people to decide whether the product is worth buying and travel reviews are appraisals or evaluations of travel destinations or travel products and services. Reviews may have a commercial purpose and good reviews help in marketing and advertising products. However the real purpose of a review is to provide an honest and relevant appraisal of certain products or services. Literature, essay or book reviews have academic purposes and reviews published in journals and magazines have academic value as these are meant to inform the reader about the strengths and weaknesses of the written piece, whether it's a research paper, a book or a thesis.

How to write a Review?

Determine the purpose of your review. Is this an academic review of a paper, book or thesis? Or a literature review for your research study? Have you been asked to write a travel review or a sport review? These will have different purposes and will have to be approached differently. The first step to writing a literature review is to collect all relevant information on the research topic. Look up all relevant sources, in the library, on the internet and in newspapers, archives, books, documents and create an outline of all the points that will be considered or added to the review. The outline must also have all the important sources, authors and page numbers so that you can go back to these sources whenever necessary. Once you have substantial information and an informative or comprehensive outline, read the relevant information from the identified sources, thoroughly.

After the outline and reading, focus on writing the literature review. Start with an introduction on the research topic and go back to the sources that define or explain the research topic clearly. Use a few quotes to define your research question and then move on to elaboration or creating the body of the paper. For this, follow your outline and elaborate on each point, going back to your sources and citing all relevant sources of information. After you have the elaboration for each point in your outline, focusing on critical analysis and provide strengths and weaknesses of the information you collected. Finally, integrate your information to provide your own research direction and conclusions, as well suggestions or recommendations for further research.

What are the different types of Reviews?

In this article, we will primarily focus on literature reviews, book reviews and essay or research paper reviews. Reviews of books are critical analysis of the subject, the author and the approach of the book. If it's a work of fiction, a book review will focus on the story and analyze any flaws in the story. The critic or reviewer will discuss the relevance of the book, the language or writing style of the author and whether the book has been able to achieve its purpose. A literature review, as in a thesis or a research paper is an analysis of background information available on the specific research topic. It is an appraisal of all information that the researcher could search, collect and analytically present within the thesis or paper. A review of a research paper is essentially a critique or a critical analysis and the reviewer will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, and provide recommendations on how to improve the paper. Reviews are thus of different types and could have a marketing purpose, as in case of product reviews, or reviews can have an academic purpose as in case of thesis or literature reviews. Reviews can also have an informative purpose as some newspapers review places, or activities to inform consumers.

Concluding Remarks

A review is an essential part of academic degree because literature reviews form the basis of a well written paper or thesis. Book reviews and essay reviews follow a critical analysis approach, but all reviews are meant to provide an appraisal of the information available. Book reviews are crucial features of newspapers and newspapers regularly a review artwork, plays, music and scientific achievements. Thus in addition to reviews related to academic work, if you need to present or write reviews for newspapers and magazines, contact an essay writing service. To know how to improve your literature reviews, read reviews of the best term paper services at FreelanceEssayWriters.com/recommended-services.