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1. Essays
Some advice on how to write an effective essay

2. What is the task?
• Write a critical review of one podcast chosen from the course outline
(link to Voxdev podcasts on D2L)
• What is a critical review? Think of a review for a book, movie, video
game, etc. A good review contains (1) some
background/context/motivation, (2) a summary, and (3) discussion of
problems/limitations (and possibly solutions), typically in that order. It
is self-contained (i.e. understandable to someone who didn’t read the
article)
• 1500-2000 words
• Due March 30th (3 weeks)

3. Introduction
• Job is to provide background/context/motivation
• Why is the topic important? Why is the particular question explored
in the research important? (what is different/distinct vs. what we
already know, learned from other studies?)
• Relate to class material (readings, lectures, presentations), quote a
few statistics, tell a little story
At the end of introduction (1-2 paragraphs), should have a clear
• thesis statement (what the essay will argue): should include an
assessment, e.g. the research is convincing at showing X, but could be
improved by considering Y and Z.

4. Summary
• Describe the setting – where and who is being studied
• What is the experiment or “treatment” being considered? Be as
precise as possible.
• What are the outcomes being analyzed (be precise – magnitudes are
helpful)?
• What are the main results?
• For some podcasts, it may help to look at the research paper that the
podcast is based on to fill in some of the gaps/details.

5. Critique
• Don’t just say that what you liked or not (found convincing or not) but tell
us why
• Aim for 2-3 main points
• Constructive is always better
• Is the question/experiment misguided or missing some fundamental point?
Is there a different and better way to answer the same question? Is there
some modification/variation of the experiment that would be more
interesting/illuminating? Are there alternative ways to interpret the same
results? Are there outcomes that the authors did not consider that are
important and worth considering?
• It is ok to ask whether similar results would hold or not in other settings
(countries, different populations) but better if you can provide a reasons
why.

6. Additional considerations
• Relating the topic or methods to material covered in
readings/lecture/presentations is strongly encouraged!
• Use of 1-2 additional sources is encouraged (besides textbook/class
readings/lectures)
• Any citation style is fine
• Spell-check and proofread – style matters!
• Essays submitted by next week will be returned by March 23rd