Dr. Karen Palmer
What is an Evaluative Argument?
If you’ve ever read through reviews on Amazon before purchasing a product, checked Yelp before choosing a restaurant, or watched a product unpacking video, you’ve experienced real world evaluations. In fact, evaluation is an important part of our daily lives. In this section of the text, we’ll explore some familiar topics, like employee evaluations, restaurant reviews, and product reviews, in order to practice writing evaluation arguments for academic purposes.
Evaluative arguments center around the question of quality. i.e. Is something good? Bad? Evaluative judgments are also about values—both what the writer thinks is important and what the writer thinks readers believe is important. i.e. Is a company truthful in its advertising? Is a cause worth supporting? Sometimes the writer’s values are not the same as his/her readers’ values, so he/she has to bridge the gap by showing respect for the audience’s opinions and clarifying the points that they do and don’t agree upon.
The following video discusses an important workplace evaluation–employee performance reviews. Many of the tips given by the speaker apply to writing evaluations about other topics, as well.
Appropriate Criteria
Imagine you were being evaluated for a promotion at work, and your promotion was denied because the evaluator didn’t like your music choices. Unless you were a radio DJ, that would be extremely unfair!
To be taken seriously, a writer must have valid reasons for his evaluation. These reasons should be based on criteria that are typical for a particular topic. Imagine choosing attire for a job interview at a very prestigious law firm. You look at the jeans and t-shirts in your closet and immediately decide to go shopping. Why? Because the clothes in your closet don’t meet the criteria for the interview. You know that, in order to get the job, you need to look like you belong at that law firm because there are standards or criteria for appropriate dress in that workplace.
In the same way, choosing the appropriate criteria for evaluating a subject is important in writing an evaluation. If a writer is evaluating a car, for example, the writer might consider standard criteria like fuel economy, price, and safety ratings. But the writer also might consider style, warranty, color, and other special options, like sound systems, depending on personal preference and the potential audience of the evaluation. Even though all people might not base their choice of a car on these secondary criteria, they are still considered acceptable or standard criteria.
Exercise: The Importance of Choosing Criteria
- Think about what criteria you use to evaluate a fast food employee. You might include things like quick service, friendly attitude, and cleanliness. List at least three criteria.
- Now, think about what criteria you would use to evaluate a comedian. You might include things like reflective of culture, universality, innovation, etc. List at least three criteria.
- Watch these short clips of fast food employees working in a drive-thru.
Dave Letterman at McDonald’s: 1993
Impractical Jokers: Slinging Burgers, 2012
4. Evaluate the employees based on your fast food employee criteria and then on your comedian criteria.
5. Reflect on how your perception of the employee changes depending on which criteria you use. Does either celebrity say or do something that you might accept from a comedian, but not a fast food employee?
6. Though these two clips have similar contexts, the type of humor is different. How do you account for that? Are there any criteria that you would add to your comedian criteria after watching these videos?
Just for fun…try to find a newer clip of a celebrity working at a fast food restaurant/drive-thru and apply the same criteria to their performance.
Not only should you be able to clearly define appropriate criteria for your subject, but you should know enough about it that you can also teach your readers something new about the topic. According to Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz (2008), “If you know a subject well enough to evaluate it, your readers should learn something from you when you offer an opinion.” In general, researching your topic before beginning to write about it is wise, but, in the case of an evaluation, you should begin with a familiar topic. This allows you to create a basic structure of your essay based on your opinion, and then later look for more information to help strengthen your argument.
Attributions:
- Quotation from 2008 edition of Everything’s An Argument, edited by Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz.
- Content created by Dr. Karen Palmer and last edited 2024. Licensed CC BY NC.
