Critical reading checklist

Criticality is an important skill which you need to apply when reading literature for your final year
project. You shouldnt just accept what you read at face value, you need to take a questioning and
critical approach to determine whether it is trustworthy and reliable, and whether the research,
ideas or arguments presented are robust.
There are a number of critical questions you may want to ask yourself when reading texts:

Who is the author? (description)

What is the aim of the paper? (description)

When was the piece of research done? (description)

What are the authors main arguments? (description)

What are the assumptions made? (description)

Is their argument presented in a clear way? (analysis)

Is their argument based on evidence? (analysis)

What kind of evidence have they used? Is it reliable and relevant? (analysis)

Where is the author coming from? Are they pushing a certain point of view? (analysis)

Have they supported their arguments using a number of different sources? (analysis)

What methodology has the author used to reach their conclusions? Is it appropriate? Are
their weaknesses to their approach? (analysis)

Have they provided references to the evidence? (analysis)

Do you think this evidence is strong enough to support their argument? (evaluation)

Why it is significant? (evaluation)

How does this compare to what is already known? (evaluation)

What are the implications? (evaluation)

How does it relate to my research project? (evaluation)

The Final Chapter: http://library.leeds.ac.uk/tutorials/thefinalchapter