I felt like one significant takeaway from chapter 5 would be the four points of evaluation on page 156. These include judgment, reasons, criteria, and evidence. These four things determine if a proper evaluation has been carried out. Judgment is a personal opinion on what is being reviewed. It's your stance on the subject. Your reasons come next, and these are based on your criteria and your evidence. Criteria is your basis for making your judgment. This also has to do with the amount of knowledge the person reviewing has on the subject. Lastly there is your evidence which is factual details or observations that back your reason for having a particular stance on the subject. Another key observation I had was the importance of language in writing a review. The "voice" of the writer tends to show through more in a review due to the fact that it is largely based on the writers feelings towards the thing being reviewed. This is where the writer needs to be careful, as the book states, in avoiding "insider" language on the topic. This is usually the case if the writer is very knowledgeable on the topic. Since reviews are intended for a large audience, this language can be confusing to those who don't share the same expertise.
In my personal life I use reviews quite often. I use them to make decisions on what to buy or spend my time doing. One specific example of this would be when buying my first car. Being such a large investment, a lot of thought and consideration was needed before any final decisions were made. I looked at a lot of reviews from larger auto review websites but decided that these might be a little removed from ones personal experiences. I decided to look at multiple blogs of personal accounts of ownership of a few of the different cars I was considering. Through this and the other more technical reviews I was able to confidently make the purchase and have been happy with my decision ever since.
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| Kelly Blue Book Auto Review Site. One I used in the process of buying a car. |
I am actually looking into buying a new car because my car now is on its last legs and I am currently looking for a new car with Kelley Blue Book as of now. Know in other people have use the same site as me is very assuring.
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