Generally, the most common reason for marks associated deduction in academic writing is the absence of critical thinking. Most students, instead of evaluating things through critical thinking, just state the facts and evidence to strengthen their work. Descriptive writing is not the wrong way to attempt a question, it just sometimes fails to fulfil the requirements of a module. Addition of critical thinking in your work while evaluating something, makes it more precise and acceptable by the institutions. This essay will highlight some distinguishing features of both types of writing so that even a beginner can differentiate between the aims of descriptive, and critical writings. The establishment of equilibrium between descriptive and critical writing in a single piece of writing can help even an average student in getting class distinction. Hence, good academic piece of writing must be a perfect blend of both descriptive and critical writing.
1. Descriptive Writing
Descriptive writing is an essential part of academic writing, as without description, no one can state evidence and supporting details to highlight the significance of a topic or rationale. The background and significance of a topic under study is the matter of descriptive writing. The essence of such writing is that in this, you are just describing events, others' work, possibilities, steps to achieve specific goals, as well as happenings without adding your flavour or transformation. A writer uses descriptive assignment writing services to tell the reader what a problem is. It also includes what you have previously studied about a particular process and mostly considered as a part of reflective essay and blog writing. Argumentative claims and comparisons between two things are outside the field of descriptive writing. Some important features of descriptive writings are enlisted in Table 1 below;
- Descriptive writing
- States what is the topic under study.
- What are the facts about the study.
- What others say about it.
- Only describe things.
- Just states how something happens.
- Explains theories and models.
- Lists things or events one by one.
- Outlines the number of events.
- Gives step by step description of a mechanism.
2. Critical Writing
To increase the validity of research work, you must conclude things critically and include argumentative claims so that readers can pick your points of discussion. In critical writing, you are convincing the reader about your in-hand knowledge on the topic of interest. This evaluation simply means measuring the weightage of two facts, by comparing, debating, and transforming findings of other credible knowledge pools. To increase validity of the research, critical evaluation describes how much the given evidence is useful for proving the issue you have highlighted. A general way to do critical analysis is to use evaluation or findings from secondary sources and develop your arguments by using these evaluations. Being critical simply means you can support or oppose an author’s points of view but unfortunately most students think everything is right and hence they fail to establish contradictory arguments. Some important distinguishing features of critical writing are enlisted in Table 2 below;
- Critical writing
- Relate two things with each other.
- Evaluate the truthiness of a fact.
- Compare one person’s work with others.
- Find the originality of a research.
- Establish judgements out of facts.
- Predict the possibility of an event that can occur.
- Favour one thing on the basis of strengths and weaknesses.
- Find the significance of a study.
3. Difference Between Critical and Descriptive Writing
Both descriptive and critical dissertation proposal writing services styles are very important in academic writing, and no one can produce something impressive without a proper understanding of these types. It is important to note that a homogenous blend of both types is essential within academic writing. The difference between descriptive and critical writing helps writers create a balanced essay. These differences can be highlighted as follows;
Descriptive writing is the simplest form of academic writing because in this type of writing there is no need to develop arguments. Only background information and proper evidence can meet the requirements because descriptive writing does not demand any analysis or evaluations. The analysis and evaluations are requirements of critical writing.
Beginners are usually more comfortable with the descriptive style of writing because in this style you do not need to go out of the context of papers you searched for to develop your research. While in critical writing you need to use your critical thinking skills to develop a critical model.
Good debating skills help writers in critical writing because in this type of writing you need to answer HOW, WHY, WHEN, WHAT, and WHO. So it is a little bit technical for beginners. Whereas for descriptive writing, you don’t need to answer these questions.
Critical analysis means giving both supporting and opposing arguments on the point of study which requires in-depth information, and strong research. While in descriptive writing you can directly say ‘that a particular event happened’ without a description of when that event happened, or who was responsible for that in your opinion. Both positive and negative points must be used to compete the critical analysis.
In descriptive writing, you directly state that according to x author the general mechanism of pumping of the heart is this…. No one can claim you for your writing because you are introducing someone else’s work but in critical analysis, you must follow a proper structure like Author X said the mechanism of pumping of the heart is ‘abcd’, and author Y said that the mechanism of pumping of the heart is ‘efg’. According to author Z, the shortest possible path of pumping is ‘adeg’, so these findings analysed that Author X proposed the most practical model as compared to Y and Z Authors. In short, critical writing is trickier than descriptive writing.
Descriptive writing gives evidences to support an argument while critical writing makes reasoned judgment out of the information provided.
The success of academic writing depends on the fact of how effectively you have woven arguments to justify your thesis statement.
