General Self- or Group-Critique Paper

You will generally be asked to watch your own speech, presentation, or group presentation in order to critique the performance, evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. For instance, if you were writing a critique of a persuasive speech, you would likely have to comment on your audience adaptation, organizational clarity, sufficient use of logical appeals, use of emotional appeals at an appropriate level, professional use of visual aids, professional delivery style, and overall effectiveness.

Any such paper should accomplish the following:

Include a clear thesis.

• Demonstrate appropriate paragraph development.
  
• Include a conclusion.
  
• Be well written and free of spelling and grammatical errors.
  
• In other words, it should be an essay.

Moreover, you need to recognize that an argument is a claim plus evidence. Often students will point to a strength in a speech but not share evidence from the speech or explain why they consider that particular feature of the speech to be a strength. Thus, evidence and sophisticated explanations are crucial for this type of paper.