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Undoubtedly, there are cases when professors ask students to prepare an evaluation essay, but the latter either do not remember or do not know how to write it. As a result, students start panicking and have no idea what they should begin with. However, there is no need to worry as we are going to provide you with clear and useful guidelines on writing the best evaluation essay your professor has ever seen. What is more, we will offer some interesting topics to explore. So, off we go!
The Elements of Evaluation Essay
The aim of the evaluation essay is to show that some product, service, or business is of good quality or vice versa. You need to provide your opinion as well, but it should not be the main focus of the paper. Therefore, an evaluation essay should be totally objective and unbiased, otherwise it will not serve its purpose.
It is important to note that there are three main elements that form the core of evaluation work. These important elements are criteria, judgments, and evidence.
Criteria
Briefly speaking, criteria are to show the expected result. For example, when you decide to buy a new mobile phone from a wireless telecommunications provider, you anticipate that the device and the mobile service will work flawlessly as claimed by the company. Therefore, based on the company’s guarantees and information it provides, you expect that the phone will serve all its functions properly whereas the service will be provided according to the set standards.
Supposedly, the provider has one of the largest networks and, consequently, the largest customer base. If the company did not manage to provide the promised services, most of the clients would stop cooperating with it and change the provider. Hence, there are certain standards that allow the product and the service to work properly. They would serve as criteria in your evaluation essay.
If you would like to focus on the phone you bought, you could use the information provided by the company regarding it. Make sure to discuss its functions, apps, battery life, and, of course, price. In addition, you are free to evaluate the quality of services the company provides in order to come up with the overall picture of company’s performance.
You should carefully discuss all the criteria so that the readers realize what they can expect both from the device and the service offered. If you fail to do it, your evaluation essay will not serve its purpose.
Judgments
The aim of the judgment is to determine whether the criteria are satisfied or not. For example, if there is no clear signal in your apartment, it can mean that the network has some flaws and, consequently, it does not answer the description provided by the company. What is more, if you call the customer support but fail to reach them, it means that company’s guarantees do not work as required. In all these cases, the criteria are not met. However, when company’s representatives provide you with full support and help to solve the issue without delay, it means that the criteria are satisfied. Overall, judgment is an inevitable element of any evaluation essay that always follows the criteria part.
Evidence
You need to include considerable and persuasive evidence in your evaluation essay, otherwise it will be a mere description of a chosen service, product, or business. You should use evidence to back up every judgment you make. If you state that the company provides unsatisfactory mobile services, you have to explain why it is so using unambiguous evidence. What made you question the quality of the services provided? What flaws did the service have? Did you try to contact support team to solve the problem? Did they reject your calls? Therefore, evidence is as important as the criteria and judgment are.
The Structure or How to Write an Evaluation Essay
As any other essay, evaluation essay has to consist of an introductory part, main body, and conclusion. The good thing is that you can choose any format for your essay. For example, you can prepare a five-paragraph evaluation essay, where the first paragraph is dedicated to the introduction of an issue, the second paragraph reveals the criteria, the third one provides judgments, the fourth paragraph considers evidence, and the last fifth paragraph summarizes the paper’s key points. Alternatively, you can devote more paragraphs to the discussion of criteria, judgment, and evidence. Thus, it is up to you what format to use.
It is important to note that you should provide a strong thesis at the end of the introduction. It is a statement that gives a comprehensive evaluation of the chosen product, business, or service.
For example, if you are going to write about provider’s poor services and unsatisfactory customer support but praise the prices, the thesis will be generally negative. Surely, you would emphasize that most of the criteria are not met by the company. Meanwhile, if you want to write about flawless work of the network and company’s first-class services as well as mentioning high prices, the thesis will be generally positive. You will definitely emphasize that the company meets most of the criteria.
When you start writing body paragraphs, you should remember that each paragraph has to discuss one idea in detail. In your evaluation essay, make sure to cover the criteria, judgments, and evidence providing logical transitions between them. Remember that you should not sound biased or prejudiced. In order to avoid being subjective, do not use such phrases as “I believe,” “I suppose,” and alike.
The final step in writing an evaluation essay is preparing a conclusion. In conclusion, you have to restate your thesis statement and then accurately but succinctly summarize the main criteria, judgments, and evidence. Even though it is the last step in the writing process, it requires same dedication and effort as the other parts of evaluation essay.
Topic Selection
The most important thing that you should remember when selecting a topic is that you need to choose a particular product, business, or service. Make sure to be specific. For example, if you choose some restaurant, you should focus on a certain issue: its dishes, service, or personnel. Yet, it should be noted that the choice of the issue will also depend on the number of pages your paper should consist of. If you need to write a 3-page essay, you will be able to evaluate only one issue. However, if you need to prepare a 10-page paper, you will be able to evaluate restaurant’s menu, personnel, as well as service.
Read Our Free Evaluation Essay Sample!
In order to determine whether a movie is successful or not, several factors composing the film should be evaluated, for example: the plot, the play of the actors, the shooting, the editing, the dynamics of the movie, the soundtracks etc. If the film was based on real events or on the book, the equivalence between the movie and the original material must be taken into consideration too. The essay presents an evaluation of David Fincher’s movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The choice of this film for evaluation was based on the criteria a movie can be evaluated.
The plot of the movie is the first criterion which makes it either thrilling or boring. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on a famous book of the same name written by Swedish journalist and writer Stieg Larson. Henrik Vagner hires a journalist who is supposed to reveal a mystery of his niece’s disappearance. The plot is tangled and confused due to the Vagner’s family ties of relationship. The family is large and it is hard to memorize who is who at first. Though, Steven Zaillian, the author of the screen version of the movie, made it easy to distinguish the characters avoiding the confusion in the viewer’s mind. There are discrepancies between the book and the movie, but this fact does not make the second one worse than the first one. The movie’s sequences are carefully developed, their composition is thoroughly chosen.
