Critique of Sample Essays

Essay Critique Paper: "Bayanihan" and "Ink and Needle"

The essays Bayanihan and Of Ink and Needle were two very interesting essays. The essay “Of Ink and Needle” basically revolved around how time and society were involved in tattoo and piercing evolution. By evolution, we mean how the relevance of tattoos and piercings differ to us now compared to before. To briefly discuss on that, the essay mentioned how tattoos used to be put on royalty or high class people. Now, tattoos seem to have “degraded” in a way and tattoos and piercings can be found everywhere and almost on everyone. Looking at the thesis statement of the essay, I clearly understood what the topic of the essay was about. But we believe that the author could have presented the thesis statement in a better way. The author could have possibly revised the arrangement a bit or maybe she could have changed some of the words or punctuation to make the thesis statement clearer. Also, my partner and I found some run-on sentences. The author had clear and straight to the point ideas but the author could still improve on that by separating these ideas instead of creating really “long”/run-on sentences. Also, minor revisions of certain sentences must be made. One example would be “For Egypt, they were used for women a lot of the time.” When one would look closely, it is evident that the sentence could use some minor revising. The author could possibly change the word “a lot” to most. Another comment would be the flow of ideas for the third paragraph. Initially, the author was talking about tattoos on Egyptian royalty or on Samoan officials then suddenly the author goes “For a long time, tattoos were only reserved for sailors and criminals.” The fluidity of ideas could still be improved with the use of correct transitional words. But other than that, the flow of the essay in general seemed to be correct. We understood the essay and the author’s points in his/her thesis statement were relayed across effortlessly. Also, we liked how the author started with tattoo and piercing definitions and how the author presented the flow of body art evolution through time.

The essay “Bayanihan” on the other hand, was mainly about how unified we are as Filipinos and how we support one another through thick and thin. Just by looking at the outline, we were able to predict that this essay would be a good and organized one. But, regarding the thesis statement, we believe that this could still be improved because it was too broad. “The Bayanihan culture is exemplified through modern Filipino sports.” could still be expanded and detailed a little bit more because there are a lot of different sports and the different readers would surely interpret this thesis statement differently. Other than that, the essay was very simple yet straight to the point. We were given clear examples and clear definitions and the fluidity of the text was great. Also, the sources were stated correctly. The author didn’t use highfaluting words to sound “smart” and the author’s choice of words were perfect for the topic. If we were to choose which essay we liked better, we’d have to say that we pick “Bayanihan” over “Of Ink and Needle”. Though both essays presented interesting ideas, “Bayanihan”was more put-together it was constantly intriguing. Also, “Bayanihan” was less erroneous and the flow of ideas and words were better.