User:ReadingIsFun173/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Article: English Studies

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because, after an initial preview of its content and talk page, it appeared to be pretty ambitious in its objectives. In its current form, the article discusses the field of "English Studies" across sub-topics and levels of education all in one page. While that may make it sound as though the article has nicely condensed its information into one easily-assessable resource, the reality of it suggests otherwise. As Wikipedia mentions at the top of the page, "this article has multiple issues" that can range from "lack[ing] sufficient corresponding inline citations" to negative biases about the subject's importance (Lead Section; Talk Page). To me, these issues on this page ultimately reflect a sense of how indifferent people are becoming towards disciplines in the Humanities. Therefore, I hope to bring attention to some of these issues and suggest ideas for improvement.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The Lead section provides a basic yet effective overview of the overarching topic and sub-sections that appear later in the article. For example, the introductory sentence is concise in regards to mentioning the levels of education in which English Studies is taught. The lead in general also does a good job of describing the range of topics within English Studies, as well as how these various areas of study lie on a spectrum between "language" (closer to "linguistics[,]" another "distinct discipline") and "literature" (Lead Section). One important critique of the lead section, however, is that its most citied source is 57 years old. Although the source is an academic article that was published by the "National Council of Teachers of English[,]" its age does suggest that some of the information given could be outdated in certain respects. To fix this issue, additional and newer sources should be added while older sources should be revisited to ensure that nothing is too far out of date to be used.

Content

Overall, the content presented in each section of the article is inherently relevant to the overarching topic. And, for the most part, the information given on English Studies in secondary and post-secondary education appears to be up-to-date. Nevertheless, there do appear to be a few "lapses" in information (such as the absence of information on English Studies in primary education, which was referenced in the introductory sentence). Also, though the article does mention and list out several sub-sections of literature that focus on more underrepresented identities (e.g. "African American Literature[,]" "Jewish American Literature[,]" etc.), it does not go into detail on how these sub-sections are studied (Fields). To amend this, each sub-section of literature could include a brief paragraph touching upon their backgrounds as separate areas of study within English Studies in general.

Tone and Balance

On the whole, the article does appear to present a neutral tone in regards to the overarching topic. If it seems as though some inkling of a bias or definite viewpoint is present in the article, it could likely be the outcome of reproducing a source's biases (e.g. the weird wording of "other less intuitive job options..." (Career opportunities). Moreover, a more "fringe" opinion expressed several times within the article could be the lists of potential career opportunities deemed assessable to English degree holders. Since each list appears to mention one or two jobs not mentioned or even related to the jobs in the previous list, one might assume that the presence of a bias (either from a source or a contributor) might be influencing the information provided.

Sources and References

The sources for this article come from a mix of academic articles, educational reports, and regular websites/articles related to educational subjects and institutions. The authors behind these articles and reports are also not incredibly diverse, since most if not all of them are white. In this sense, an important intervention to the article could be finding new sources written by people of color (and perhaps connected to the other sub-sections of literature mentioned in the lead).

Organization and Writing Quality

The article as a whole is written in clear sentences and broken down into well-organized sections. I also only found about one or two grammatical errors throughout the entire article.

Images and Media

The article does include what appears to be a clipart picture of an open book with others books and a scroll behind it. Aside from being a visual representation of the kinds of materials that students and instructors work with in English Studies, the clipart picture does not play any particularly important role in the article.

Talk Page Discussion

The talk page for this article presents several interesting issues in regards to biases and the lack of enough sources to make this article meet the standards necessary for Wikipedia (Talk page). The reasoning behind the article's extensive ground-covering of English Studies is explained in just one thread on the page, and the purposes for doing so seem pretty necessary in the context of Wikipedia. However, there are also threads that don't really need to be on the page (e.g. one thread expressing how the article made them consider choosing English as their college major, and another making a solely opinionated case for revisions). The article is also a part of multiple WikiProjects, with "Education" listed first as "Start-class...High-importance" (Talk page).

Overall Impressions

To me, the article is definitely still in need of many revisions and a serious overview of how English Studies could be represented best on Wikipedia. The amount of information already on the page gives future contributors a good place to start, but further expansion on the sub-sections will be vitally important if the article is going to improve. I would also say that, at the time of writing this evaluation, this article is underdeveloped in many ways and requires the close attention of future contributors when it comes recognizing and fixing its shortcomings.