Rob Weir's 4 Z-Rules

Below is Prof. Rob Weir's 4Z Method of Reviewing.

The 4Z Method of Reviewing

Reviews are quite different than the book reports you did as kids. A review generally has at least four parts, which I dub the 4Zs because the next to last letter in each is a Z. The four things to do are:

Summarize

This is the shortest thing in many reviews. Do not give a blow-by-blow description, rather confine yourself to very quick remarks that merely give enough context for you to…

Analyze

Readers want to know why the work in question is interesting, important, or useful. This means you are more likely to write about the themes and/or findings in the work instead of stories, methods, or narratives. Why should a reader bother with this work? What will it tell them? How will they be illumined by engaging with it? What is the thesis of the work? The major ideas presented?

Criticize

This does not mean that you “trash” the work. This term references the academic skill of criticism in the sense that it is an assessment of what makes a work worthy or not. What kinds of evidence or methods are used? Is the work original? If so, what makes it so? If the work is merely more of what is already known, let the reader know this. How convincing is the work and what makes it so (or not)? Does thee writer use examples and studies to back claims, or is the evidence mostly rhetorical?

Synthesize

This involves locating the work in question within the context of a larger scheme. Every discipline and subject has a history of how others have approached the same or similar topic. Where does this writer fit within the grand sweep? To whom is comparable or contrasting? Does the writer really break new ground? (Almost every study claims that it does, but you have to judge if that’s true.)

Rob Weir is Research Associate in the Smith College History Dept. and a Visiting Professor at UMass Amherst. He can be reached at [weir.r at comcast.net]