Writing a Quality Evaluation

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Writing a Quality Evaluation

• Analytical and Rhetorical Writing
• Matt Barton

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Evaluations

• Evaluations answer questions.
• Which car should I buy?
• Which college or university should I attend?
• Why am I eligible for promotion?
• Evaluations do more than state whether you like
  something.
• They make an argument that your opinion is worth
  taking seriously.

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Criteria

• Good evaluations have good criteria.
• Develop and describe the standards and importance
  of each criteria.
• An evaluation of a car might include criteria
  like gas mileage, acceleration, warranty
  coverage, etc.
• Which criteria are the most important? What
  represents good or bad in each category?

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Criteria for movies

• What are some criteria for evaluating movies?
• Acting
• Plots
• Special Effects
• Historical accuracy
• Cinematography
• Writing

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Detail

• Avoid unsubstantiated opinions or
  generalizations.
• Jenny is highly qualified for this position
  thats just my opinion.
• Give specific details to support your opinions.

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Levels of Detail

• There are three levels of detail
• Physical Details
• Emotional Details
• Critical Details

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Physical Details

• Things that can be observed with the five
  sensesseeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and
  tasting.
• Dead Poets Society opens with a lovely view of
  the campus. The camera slowly pans over majestic
  oak treesThe season is Autumn
• Physical details are facts that can be verified.

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One Minute Writing 1

• Write a sentence with lots of physical details.

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Emotional Details

• Feelings, intuitions, and the like that cant be
  verified by the senses.
• Many of the scenes take place in huge,
  Gothic-style buildings that evoke strong feelings
  of reverence. This style of architecture makes
  one feel small and in the presence of greatness.
• One watches Old School for one reasonto forget
  about real life for awhile and revel in absurd
  but amusing fantasy.

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One Minute Writing 2

• Write a sentence with emotional details based on
  the sentence you wrote earlier.

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Critical Details

• An inquiry into the motives, reasons, or causes
  for internal details. They try to explain why you
  feel a certain way towards something.
• The gloomy and majestic architecture helps set
  the tone for the rest of the movie, which is
  about fragile human spirits confronted with the
  overwhelming majesty of sacred tradition and
  reverence for ancient authority.
• A Beautiful Mind is part of a recent trend of
  solipsistic fantasieswhat if the real world
  wasnt real at all? This fear can perhaps be
  explained by growing skepticism about the
  government and all types of official
  information.

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One Minute Writing 3

• Write a sentence with critical details based on
  your previous sentences.

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A Balance of Details

• Think about these levels of detail working
  together in a paper
• Physical Details provide the foundation without
  them, nothing else makes any sense.
• Emotional details offer an interpretation or
  demonstrate the relevance of the physical
  details. The bare facts do not mean anything
  unless they provoke an emotional response.
• Critical details weave together physical and
  emotional details and explain why as well as
  what.

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Examples of Details

• Lets examine James Barardinellis review of his
  favorite movie, Patton, for examples of these
  types of detail.

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Physical Details

• Aside from the campaigns he waged in North
  Africa, Sicily, and across Europe, the general is
  perhaps best remembered for an incident when he
  slapped an enlisted man.
• The film opens in 1943 North Africa, with a
  brutal look at American casualties at the battle
  of Kasserine. Patton arrives from Morocco to take
  command the U.S. army in Tunisia in preparation
  for fighting Rommel (Karl Michael Vogler) at el
  Gitar.

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Emotional Details

• Patton was neither cold nor insensitive - he
  cared deeply about those under his command who
  stood in the face of enemy fire and refused to
  yield.
• The viewer's attention is riveted to the screen,
  and only when the final credits roll do external
  distractions reassert themselves.

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Critical Details

• Those who have not seen Patton, or who have not
  watched the film carefully, might assume that
  this movie is about World War Two and one of its
  most celebrated generals. In fact, they would be
  only partially correct. What Patton sets out to
  do is to demythicize its subject and show the
  forces that drove this man.
• Patton was an anachronism - a man who belonged in
  another time. He was a warrior living in a time
  when victory in battle no longer meant the
  triumph it once had, a Roman conqueror who
  understood the meaning of the words that "all
  glory is fleeting.

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Knowing the Difference

• Weave together physical, emotional, and critical
  details.
• Critical and emotional details must be built on
  physical or specific details.
• Always offer specific, concrete evidence for your
  opinions and arguments.

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Building Details

• Argument
• Jenny is a valuable asset to our company and
  should be promoted to a managerial position.
• Physical Detail
• She is the first person her colleagues turn to
  when they need help solving problems with their
  computers. Just last week, Jenny stayed three
  hours overtime just to help her supervisor
  install new budgeting software. She is consulted
  before every software purchasing decision.
• Emotional Detail
• I strongly feel that Jenny will continue to
  provide quality service and is ready and able to
  assume additional responsibilities at our
  company. She is friendly, direct, helpful, and
  eminently professional.
• Critical Detail
• Many members of our managerial staff have
  dedication, but lack the special knowledge
  required to really modernize our company and
  propel us towards the future. Jenny has both the
  dedication and the knowledge to make far-reaching
  and exciting changes to our organization.

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Workshop Picking Out Details

• Pick out the specific and concrete details in
  this piece from the New York Times
• CAMBY, Ind. - Until the fourth trip to the
  hospital in 1998, Zachery Dorsett's parents
  thought their son was an average child who was
  having trouble getting over a passing illness. He
  was 7 months old, and it was his second case of
  pneumonia.
• The Dorsetts, Sharon and Arnold, were concerned
  about Zachery's health, but they were not worried
  about the financial consequences. They were a
  young, middle-income couple, with health
  insurance that covered 90 percent of doctors'
  bills and most of the costs of prescription
  drugs.

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The Ladder of Abstraction
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A few caveats about reviews

• Here are a few things to watch for when writing
  and peer reviewing
• Did you spend too much time summarizing instead
  of evaluating?
• Did you provide enough specific detail to support
  generalizations?
• Did you have intelligent and thoughtful things to
  say? Is the review insightful, or mere fluff?

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Good luck!

• A few last tips
• Consider working with a partner or a team. Two
  heads are better than one.
• Ensure that your thesis statement isnt too
  broad This movie was great.
• Choose three scenes that really epitomize your
  focus and describe them adequately.
• Consider purchasing the DVD so you can easily
  watch key scenes repeatedly.