Academic Writing Solutions: What Is An Evaluation Essay?

An evaluation essay is primarily used when studying literature, or other related subjects. Essentially, an evaluation essay will take an in-depth analysis of a piece of literature, providing praise or criticisms when necessary. There are various aspects of the literature that you may wish to analyse and evaluate as part of your essay. To give you a better understanding of what an evaluation actually is, and how you should write one, the following explains various aspects of this kind of academic paper.

Evaluating the literary style

As part of an evaluation paper, you may wish to take into consideration the literary style of the piece of work that you are analysing. For example, you may wish to consider how the work has been written, and what themes have been used. You may then wish to look at these ideas, as well as a range of other aspects that you may wish to analyse, so as to determine how effectively the author has used the particular literary style present in the piece of work.

Quality of writing

As well as analysing the literary style, you may wish to evaluate the general quality of the writing. For example, you may wish to look at what type of words that have been used, and potentially how appropriate these are for the intended audience. For example, as part of your evaluation, you may wish to give praise for the quality of work and the nature of the language that is used if it is particularly suitable for the age range of the intended audience. However, if the piece of literature that you are analysing and evaluating has been written for children or adults but the style of language quality of the work is more suitable for people of younger or older age, then you may wish to mention this as part of your criticisms.

What to compare the piece of literature with

In order to evaluate the literature effectively, you may wish to compare it with other pieces of work. For example, if you are looking at a novel from a particular genre, then you may wish to compare it with other novels from that genre. Alternatively, you could even look at a piece of literature written by a particular writer, and compare this with any other work that they have produced.

Essentially, by comparing the piece that you are evaluating with other works, it can give you a starting point for your analysis.