How to Evaluate in an Essay

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If you already started your college education then probably you already have written a lot of different papers. We are sure that you already wrote the argumentative, narrative, or descriptive types of essay. But what about an essay of evaluation? If your teacher has asked you to write an evaluation essay, you may start thinking about how to evaluate in an essay some question or topic. And that’s why we decided to create this review where we will tell how to evaluate essay for your college, what is the purpose of this piece of writing and how to complete this type of essay for an A+.

Evaluate Essay Meaning: How Does It Differ From Other Essay Types?

You may wonder what does evaluate mean in an essay? Unlike other papers when you evaluate some subject or topic, you can’t simply tell about some subject or event like in the narrative essay. In the evaluation essay, you need to evaluate according to certain factors. Unfortunately, you will not be able to simply tell your opinion. If you want to know how to evaluate an essay, you need to totally understand the topic of discussion. In the narrative type of essay, you will not have to disclose the subject simply based on your opinion. In these types of essays, you will need to form the evaluation based on certain criteria. And in our next sections, we’ll discuss every step of the creation of an evaluation essay.

Why Evaluation in Essay Is Important: Main Points

If you want to find out how to evaluate in an essay, then first of all you should understand why you need to do that. The evaluation in an essay is crucial because it helps you to explain your point of view in a way where you will use facts and arguments to give analysis to some topic or to some subject. What is more important is that basically, you can evaluate anything that you want. However, to make it even easier for you we have collected some points that will give you an understanding of the evaluation’s importance.

Subjective Assessment

Evaluation is a great way to provide your reader with a subjective assessment of some topic. The main point of the evaluation is your subjectivity. But despite that, you should also remember that despite the subjectivity, you should have a good awareness of the discussed topic. That means that you are not able to tell your readers about something you do not understand. The first thing that you will have to do is to understand the discussed topic completely and only after that start the evaluation.

Better Understanding of the Topic

You need to understand that the evaluation is a great way to provide your readers with a better understanding of the topic. You will have a huge responsibility on your shoulders since you will need to create a full vision for your reader regarding the topic of discussion. So, your evaluation will help to fully assess the situation and create one or another impression. That’s why you need to pay special attention to the evaluation process since it plays a great role in the creation of impressions regarding some questions.

Opportunity to Implement Better Ideas

Evaluation process is not only the opportunity to create a full analysis of some subject. Especially if you want to evaluate the essay, you need to understand that the evaluation process is also a great way to improve some existing processes. With the help of careful analysis, you will be able to notice some inaccuracies or problems and, as a result, offer a better solution to the problem. That’s why you can also view the evaluation from this angle.

How to Answer an Evaluate Question?

If you want to evaluate an essay correctly then you need to understand how to correctly answer the evaluation question. The evaluation questions will help you provide your readers with a full analysis of every point you want to discuss. To help you to understand how to answer the evaluation questions and to make your evaluation essay as logical and correct as possible, we have added these pieces of advice that might be really useful for you.

Explain All Sides of the Argument

To correctly answer the evaluation question, you have to explain all sides of the argument. For example, you want to evaluate the usage of a popular essay writing service by a student community. And to correctly answer the evaluation question, you will need to provide every side of the argument. In evaluation, there is no correct or wrong opinion, and that’s what you should be guided by during the creation of an evaluation essay. For example, if we are talking about the usage of some service, you should bring to attention both for and against it. That’s how a proper evaluation question will be answered.

Use Examples

Another important point you should always remember during answering the evaluation questions is proper examples. By providing a good example, you will be able to provide a detailed answer to the evaluation question. To do that first of all you should think about the examples that will give your readers a total understanding of the evaluated subject. With proper examples, it will be much easier for you to answer such questions and as a result, it will give a greater understanding of the topic.

Understand the Question Word Correctly

If you want to answer the evaluation questions, then another important point to which you should always pay special attention is understanding the question words. Based on the type of question you want to answer you will have to use a different approach. You need to understand that there is no way to answer correctly to a question that has been understood incorrectly. That’s why in the table below you will find some popular words that you will frequently meet on some evaluation topics.

 

 

Evaluate You may ask what evaluate means in an essay? When you will answer and evaluate the question, you will need to rate every significant point of the discussed subject. As we already mentioned for this matter, you will have to use both sides of the argument.
Analyze When the question will ask you to analyze the subject, that means that you will have to dig into the origin of the question, divide the topic into several parts and discuss each separately.
Justify When we are talking about justifying questions, we mean that you will have to explain the reason why you have such a position regarding some topic. You also should be ready to answer questions from your opposites to make your opinion look even stronger.
Critically Evaluate When you will need to critically evaluate the same topic you will need to explain your position, and why you agree or do not agree with some statement. What is more important is that you need to do that in the most critical way. Of course, you will have to base your critical evaluation on solid pieces of evidence and facts.
Review If the question will have a “review” part in it that means that you will have to research all the parts of the discussed topic. Another important step that you will need to do is add your own opinion regarding the discussed question.

How to Evaluate In an Essay Example?

If you want to successfully create evaluation essays and easily write such kinds of papers, you need to understand the steps you have to take. Evaluation is a process like anything else, and to succeed in this matter, you should be totally aware of the necessary actions you need to complete to successfully complete this kind of paper. And that’s why in this section we will tell you about the necessary steps that you will have to observe to make the evaluation process as smooth as possible.

Read the Sources Carefully

The first rule of successful evaluation is a good awareness of the topic. That’s why there is no way that you can start the evaluation of some problem without proper preparation. Before even thinking about the structure of your evaluation essay, we suggest you carefully check all the research, sources, and all kinds of information that you will find related to the question. That will help you to form your opinion regarding the topic and evaluate the problem properly.

Form the Proper Objectives

Another important step that will help you to evaluate things correctly is creating the right objectives. That means that before writing the evaluation you will have to create a special outline with your goals in which you will fix the points that you want to evaluate. Do not rush, with forming the objectives, because the result of your writing will greatly depend on this step. It’s also worth noting that by completing this step you will significantly facilitate the process of evaluation because you will already have a clear plan for your future paper.

Provide the Results

Like any other research paper, the evaluation essay requires providing results. That means that your evaluation will not be considered complete if you will not tell about the results of your evaluation. That’s why it’s always crucial to tell your readers about the results which you have received during the process of evaluation of one or another question. So make sure to add at least a little conclusion and your own opinion regarding the complete research.

What Are the Integral Parts of an Evaluation Essay?

Like any other regular academic paper evaluation essay might have its own outline and integral parts. But the good news is that the evaluation paper is really similar to the regular essay types that we are sure you already have written in your college. It will also have an introduction, body, thesis statement, arguments, and counterarguments. And in this section, we will take a closer look at the most important parts from the side of creating the evaluation paper.

Thesis Statement

Your evaluation essay will need to have a thesis statement. As you already may know, the thesis statement is the main idea of your dissertation. Your whole paper should be based on the thesis that will represent the whole idea and purpose for creating the evaluation. To make a good thesis, you will have to convey the essence of the evaluation in one simple and logical sentence. This sentence will represent your opinion and will represent the topic of evaluation to your readers.

Arguments

Your evaluation will have to include arguments and counterarguments. With their help, you will need to provide the arguments that will help you to clearly explain your position regarding the evaluated process and subject. There is no way of evaluating any subject or process without providing solid arguments and facts. So, if you do not want to be criticized for your paper, we suggest you work on your arguments.

Conclusion of Your Evaluation

Like any other type of academic paper your evaluation will need to include at least a short conclusion which will be based on the results of your evaluation process. In your summary, you can remind your readers about your thesis, important and main arguments, and of course, provide them with a logical conclusion. Only after that, your evaluation may be considered completed.

Conclusion

As you may already have noted, evaluation is important in academic writing that is frequently used to provide evaluation regarding some topic or subject. This type of essay is often used in colleges and universities so that students can study how to properly evaluate certain events or objects. We really hope that our article has helped you to better understand the process of evaluation and that you will successfully implement it into your college routine.

Written by:
Abby Walter
I struggled a lot with academic texts as a student. Not only writing but also reading and interpreting them. I joined a course on academic writing offered by the university library, and everything changed. Luckily, you don’t have to attend offline workshops to become better at academic writing. I genuinely believe that our database can help you instead.
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