User:Jameiladudley/Evaluate an Article

Jameiladudley/Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Linguistics (Linguistics)
 * I choose this article to evaluate because I will be taking a Linguistics and Culture class this upcoming Spring 2020 semester. I want to learn more of the process of this scientific study of language.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * I think that the Lead introduces a good variety of the different types of analysis that the linguistics language has. It states that it involves language form, meaning, and context. The article provides a basis of the variation, universality, structures, approaches that exist within the linguistics language. The lead paragraph about linguistics, discusses the documentation and the description of language, which is also discussed only in a two other paragraphs.

Content

 * Guiding questions

I think that this article is completely relevant to the topic because it is describing the different types of studies linguistics is relative with. For example, social, political, cultural, and historical all portray how the language context in determined. Meaning, that the languages around us have and will continue to change and grow. As individuals, we see,use, and hear language all around us. Some of the references I have noticed are not that up to date as I thought they would be. The content on the article in the section about semiotics, is the content I believe could have been left out of the article. In the article it states that semiotician's do not restrict themselves to linguistic communication when studying the use of signs. I feel that if it's not associated with the use of linguistics, than it should not be included.


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions

The article provides good evidence to support the different types of linguistics. The only thing I think that should have been included could have maybe been some actual examples. Other than that, I think the article is neutral, because it contains arguments describing the different theories of the linguistics language. In the article, I saw claims that were used to describe these theories as well. The claim I found to appear the most biased would be with the variation and universality of linguistics.


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions

I think many of the facts stated in the article have clear secondary sources, because in most of the paragraphs they provide links for them. The sources provide the name of the title, author, and the page number as well. The most recent source I found to be was 2018, and the earliest was 1937. In the Structures section, I clicked a few links to over check them, and they were all reliable sources. The article could have more current sources, but the sources links are valid.


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Organization

 * Guiding questions

I think that this article is written in a well format. I did not have any trouble understanding anything in the article, everything was precise with the topics. The article did not have any spelling errors that needed to be fixed. The sections had the right categories I feel in my opinion for the most part. There is one heading section called "Areas of Research", and it contains information involving historical linguistics, ecolinguistics, sociolinguistics, developmental linguistics, and neurolinguistics. The only thing I would suggest about this article would be that the Lead paragraph have more of an introduction. The article also contains sections of the history, applied linguistics, approaches, etc.


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions

The article does not include the use of images throughout. I feel that if the article included images, that it could have made an impact on the topic though. The only thing I noticed that I guess you could consider to be an use of image would be at the bottom of the page where it has the link to the Wikipedia's sister project. Considering that linguistics plays a role with language and culture, I feel that images could have contributed to demonstrating that well.


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions

Some points I noticed on the talk page included complaints on the sub fields not having any relation, and the linguistics study of sound. The article shows to be rated as a Wiki Education Foundation- supported course assignment. There is a student editor name mentioned who is assigned to it. It is also rated as a B-class, and mentions that the subject featured in the "Outline of Linguistics", is incomplete and needs more development. When something is incomplete, this is not considered a good starting point, and that is something mentioned this semester that does not need to happen.


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions

The articles overall status is that it needs to maybe have some more descriptive findings for the topics. The introduction I feel was not the best attention grabber, because the first sentence started with a very short definition of what linguistics meant. I think that the second paragraph would have been a better choice for an introduction. Some of the articles strengths would be that it contained many section headings of different terms involving the linguistics language. If I could assess this article, I would add images and more descriptions with examples.


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~Jameiladudley


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