EAPP Lecture Summary 03

Lesson 03a: Objective Assessment

Opinions are your own views of certain issues or concerns. There are words that
you can use when expressing your opinion. Here are some phrases that you can use:

I think… From my point of view

I believe… From my perspective
I feel… In my view
In my opinion… It seems to me that
I would say…

These are examples of ways to express your opinion:

I think technology is harmful.
In my view, technology is not useful and helpful.
In my opinion, technology is very important nowadays.

You may also just state your opinions without using those phrases. You can just
say, Technology is harmful but only when you are in an informal situation. If you are in a
formal setting, it would be appropriate to use those phrases.

You are entitled to your own opinions, but these opinions must be based on facts
so that you will not be biased.

It is very important that you will not be focused only on giving opinions. You must
also look for information that will help support your opinion because –

• this will add to the credibility and validity of your opinion; and
• more will believe you if what you express is strongly supported with information
that are true and correct.

A very important expository discourse that you must learn how to write is the
reaction paper, review, or critique. It is mainly written to communicate a fair assessment
of situations, people, events, literary and artistic works and performances. Whether a
social commentary, or a critical judgment, it conveys incisive insights into its analysis of
events, its interpretation of the meaning or importance of a work or artifact, or its
appreciation of the moral or aesthetic values reflected in the work or performance. It may
include the main purpose of the event; the devices and strategies employed; an
evaluation of its success or failure; and an assessment of its significance and relevance,
timeliness or timelessness.

Lesson 03b: Approaches in Literary Criticism

 When you express your views, it is also important to use appropriate language for
a specific discipline. There are terms that you should prefer to put in your writing
depending on the field or context you are in.

For example, if you are to convince people who are experts in the field of Science
and Mathematics, you need to use their language. Here are examples of terms that you
can use in the following disciplines.

Science Mathematics General Terms

Experiments Equation Test
Lab equipment Statistical tool Materials
Invention Solution Action
Laboratory test Result Pregnancy Test
Hormones and Genes Equivalent Values Family

You should be formal and use technical terms that are familiar to them. However,
if your audience is the general public, you also need to use the language they know. Do
not use those that are not common to them. Avoid jargons or technical words and slang
or invented words. You can be informal when necessary. However, you must never forget
to be POLITE to avoid having future problems.

Learning appropriate language and manner is not enough in expressing your

views. There are critical approaches that you can use to make it more convincing and
appropriate.

Read about the critical approaches. You can highlight some important ideas. You
can use these in expressing your views.

1. Formalist Criticism
This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs
to be examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work
are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the
elements of form—style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.— that are found within the text. A
primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the
text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.

2. Gender Criticism
This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception
of literary works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today
includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “masculinist” approach recently
advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes
as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought
have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male
produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by
analyzing and combatting such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the
characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder
a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include “analyzing how sexual
identity influences the reader of a text” and “examining how the images of men and
women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept
the sexes from achieving total equality.”

3. Historical Criticism
This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social,
cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the
artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of
a literary work upon its original readers.
4. Reader-Response Criticism
This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists not as an artifact
upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a
reader. It attempts “to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a
text” and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process.

5. Media Criticism
It is the act of closely examining and judging the media. When we examine the
media and various media stories, we often find instances of media bias. Media bias is the
perception that the media is reporting the news in a partial or prejudiced manner. Media
bias occurs when the media seems to push a specific viewpoint, rather than reporting the
news objectively. Keep in mind that media bias also occurs when the media seems to
ignore an important aspect of the story. This is the case in the news story about the
puppies.

6. Marxist Criticism
It focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the
ideological content of literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is
political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently
evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that “can lead to reductive judgment, as when
Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith
Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more
clearly.” Nonetheless, Marxist criticism “can illuminate political and economic dimensions
of literature other approaches overlook.”

7. Structuralism
It focused on how human behavior is determined by social, cultural and
psychological structures. It tended to offer a single unified approach to human life that
would embrace all disciplines. The essence of structuralism is the belief that “things
cannot be understood in isolation, they have to be seen in the context of larger structures
which contain them. For example, the structuralist analysis of Donne’s poem, Good
Morrow, demands more focus on the relevant genre, the concept of courtly love, rather
than on the close reading of the formal elements of the text.