User:Junosketch/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
English studies

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it covered the subject of English, which seems like a related subject to linguistics or language. It also seemed concise enough that it wouldn't take up a great deal of my time.

Evaluate the article
I thought the first sentence in the lead was a bit wordy. The phrase "(usually called simply English)" in the beginning of the first sentence throws off the reader with its wordiness and stunted flow. I think "simply called English" would have flowed better and be a bit less wordy. I also don't feel the lead does an adequate job of summarizing the main points of the wikipedia article. It seems odd to have a sections on the history of English but no mention of this section in the lead. The lead is overly detailed, yet doesn't seem to give an accurate summary of the article sections nor does any of its references match the same order of topics covered as in the main article. A sentence describing the History section should start its own paragraph since History has its own section in the article, I think.

I thought it was distracting to mention the disciplinary divide in English studies in the lead since there is no section on that topic in the main article. It's interesting to know there is a division in English studies, such as the difference between native speakers speaking English from those studying English as a foreign language. However, mentioning this in the lead doesn't make as much sense without a section in the main article to elaborate or provide more details. It seems the lead focuses more on explaining this division in English studies rather than what the main article actually focuses on, which would be the specifics of English majors for native speakers of English.

The first section covers the Fields (studies) of English majors, which matches up with the lead's mention of it at the beginning. However, I don't feel the lead's first paragraph did an adequate job of describing this section. The section itself doesn't give hardly any details but seems to mainly be a list of links to other Wikipedia articles without descriptions. Almost all of them are focused on literature, which is not the impression I got from reading the lead.

There are no images or photographs to see on this article except for nonspecific web graphics. A photograph of a university or a student studying might spruce up the appearance of this article and make it more visually interesting.

The information seems to be a little out of date since there's almost no mention of how the internet or smartphone technology has affected English studies. The article could benefit from more scholarly sources and references being used. The links at the end of the article all work and seem to be reliable, relevant sources.

As far as equity gaps, this article doesn't mention English studies for anyone outside of a college setting except a small section near the end on high schools in America and Canada. This could be expanded with more details on high schools, middle schools, and grade schools. More information on English studies outside a college setting would be interesting and informative. By focusing only on traditional college settings, this article might be looking over minority and marginalized groups who don't go to college.

The article seems to me mostly neutral with some bias about career opportunities for those who study English. There doesn't seem to be a bias towards a political ideal or ideology, however.

In the Talk page, others have commented on how disorganized the article is and the jumbled mess of information that makes it hard to understand what this article is mainly about (beyond English Studies). There are comments by people who attempted to improve the article and even a suggestion that it be merged with English Majors since it covers many of the same topics.~