Critical review of literature: The case of the news and views genre

Abstract

Abstract Review genres (e.g., literature review, critical review) are useful for developing students’ abilities to evaluate literature critically; they have been widely used in university contexts as assessment tasks. The ‘news and views’ article is one such review genre which is often included in science journals and which is increasingly used as an assessment task in graduate science courses. Published ‘News and views’ articles provide a synopsis and critique of a research article. Usually written by a senior researcher, they provide a good exemplar of critique. To investigate how ‘news and views’ articles persuade readers of their assessment of published studies, this article analyses the rhetorical moves and stance and engagement markers of published news and views articles. Findings were that moves in news and views articles had similarities with those in both research articles and review genres such as book reviews. Similar stance and engagement resources were used in news and views articles and research articles, but they were more frequent in news and views articles than in research articles. Based on this analysis, pedagogical applications for teaching critical evaluation of literature are discussed.