Useful Tips, Insights, and Steps to Write an Evaluation Essay

author By Mary Boies
evaluation-essay-guide-and-template

The evaluation essay is one of the most common types of essays in college. Therefore, knowing how to write it is an asset that will make your college life easier.

The essay is quite similar to a position paper because writing it entails providing your position or opinion on a topic. The best evaluation essays are often those that are well-researched and author-centered. This post discusses all the important things you need to know about the evaluation essay.

What Is an Evaluation Essay?

The evaluation essay, aka the evaluative essay, is special academic writing in which the author provides their opinion on a topic, the body of work, or subject based on a set of criteria. It differs from the conventional essay, which typically involves the author providing a fact-based report devoid of personal opinion.

A good example of an evaluation essay topic is, “Do smartwatches make us healthier?” To write this essay, you need first to give your opinion and then defend that opinion using research and evidence as you would when writing a conventional essay. In other words, to write an evaluation essay, you first need to pass judgment and then provide an author-centric fact-based analysis.

The purpose of an evaluation essay is to analyze something or to give a sort of an overview on a topic to enable the reader to decide whether they should pursue further research. While an evaluation essay must initially reflect the author’s opinion or position, it should be unbiased. The author must use reliable sources to support his position.

Steps for writing a top-grade Evaluation Essay

When you are asked to appraise, assess, rate, value, judge, estimate, analyze, and weigh up on a topic, you are simply being asked to write an evaluative essay. It could be based on a product, book, article, event, speech, or phenomenon.

To write a strong evaluation essay, you first need to form an opinion and develop evaluation criteria. The rest can then fall into place.

Follow the steps below to write an excellent evaluation essay.

1. Choose an evaluation essay topic

An evaluation essay entails coming up with an objective evaluation argument. With this in mind, the first thing you need to do is to choose an interesting evaluation essay topic. By ensuring your topic is interesting, you make it all but guaranteed that your essay will be interesting.

In addition to ensuring your essay topic is interesting, you must also ensure that you are familiar with the topic/subject. Ensuring that you are familiar with the topic will help you to make your essay engaging.
Lucky you if your professor assigns you a topic because you will only need to go to the next step.

2. Research and create a strong thesis statement

The next step entails conducting research to gather information about the topic. When familiarizing yourself with the topic, you can use both scholarly and non-scholarly sources.

Once you gather enough information, you should proceed to create a strong thesis statement. Make sure your thesis statement is clear, addresses the topic, and it is unique.

The thesis sets the overall argument for your essay. Remember, you will most likely revise the thesis as you proceed with writing your essay.

3. Create an evaluation essay outline

The next thing you need to do is to create an outline. Make sure your outline is as comprehensive as it can be.

As part of writing the outline, you need to determine the criteria used to assess the product, book, or phenomenon. You can select different benchmarks to make your writing interesting. The criteria you select varies depending on the subject that you are evaluating.

The three elements of an evaluation essay should feature well in your essay. These three elements include criteria, judgement, and evidence. They should be at the core of the structure of your essay.

Outlining will make it easy for you to write your evaluation essay. Because it will give you pointers on what to write in every paragraph. When outlining the body paragraphs, make sure you include the criterion you will use to evaluate the subject of your essay.

4. Write your evaluation essay

After creating an outline, all you need to do next is actually to write the first draft of your evaluation essay. Follow your outline for an easy time.

After all, an outline's purpose is to guide you and ensure you do not get stuck. In fact, if you create a good outline, you should have all the important sentences you need for your essay read, including the opening sentence, the thesis statement, and the topic sentences for the body paragraphs. So, follow your outline to compose a good evaluation essay.

5. Edit your essay

After composing your evaluation essay, the next thing you should do is read and improve your essay. Read it twice or thrice to eliminate all the errors. Make sure all your arguments are strong and well-developed. Also, make sure everything is very clear and to the point. If you thoroughly edit your evaluation paper, you will upgrade it from an average paper into an excellent paper.

Evaluation Essay Outline

In this section of this post, you will discover how to write the evaluation essay outline. The evaluation essay outline is pretty much the same as the conventional or standard essay outline. However, it has a few small differences. Check out the evaluation essay outline structure below to discover the differences.

I. Introduction

  1. Attention-grabbing sentence: Provide hook sentence
  2. Background information: Provide useful information to introduce the topic to the reader
  3. Thesis statement: Provide thesis statement that captures your chosen evaluation criteria (evaluation points)

II. Body paragraph 1(first criterion)

  1. Criterion: Provide topic sentence that mentions criterion plus your judgment or argument.
  2. Supporting evidence: Provide supporting evidence
  3. Mention and refute opposing views: Mention and refute opposing views to make your argument stronger

III. Body paragraph 2 (second criterion)

  1. Criterion: Provide topic sentence that mentions criterion plus your judgment or argument.
  2. Supporting evidence: Provide supporting evidence
  3. Mention and refute opposing views: Mention and refute opposing views to make your argument stronger

IV. Body paragraph 3 (third criterion)

  1. Criterion: Provide topic sentence that mentions criterion plus your judgment or argument.
  2. Supporting evidence: Provide supporting evidence
  3. Mention and refute opposing views: Mention and refute opposing views to make your argument stronger

V. Conclusion

  1. Thesis restatement
  2. Restatement of main reasons
  3. Closing statement

Evaluation Essay Sample Outline

Now that you know the evaluation essay outline structure, it is time to see an example of an evaluation essay outline. This will give you a complete idea of how to write an evaluation essay outline.

Title: Why vaping is better than traditional smoking

I. Introduction

  1. Attention-grabbing sentence: There are over 10 million vapers in the US alone, and the number is rapidly increasing.
  2. Background information: Traditional smoking is problematic in different ways. This is why many people are turning to electronic cigarettes, aka vapes.
  3. Thesis statement: This essay will evaluate vaping in terms of safety, utility, and cost to show that it is much better than traditional smoking.

II. Body paragraph 1(Safety)

  1. Criterion: In terms of safety, vaping is 95 percent safer than traditional smoking.
  2. Supporting evidence: Study from the British government.
  3. Mention and refute opposing views: The chemicals used in vaping can also be unsafe but safe chemicals do exist that cause very little or no damage.

III. Body paragraph 2 (Utility)

  1. Criterion: Regarding utility, you can vape (use e-cigarettes) in more places than you can smoke.
  2. Supporting evidence: Traditional smoking is banned in so many public spaces worldwide according to WHO.
  3. Mention and refute opposing views: Vaping is also banned in some places. However, the ban on vaping is much less severe than the ban on traditional smoking.

IV. Body paragraph 3 (Cost)

  1. Criterion: Compared to traditional smoking, vaping is quite cheap. It costs much less to vape than to use cigarettes.
  2. Supporting evidence: Vape pens cost just $20 and don’t need to be replaced.
  3. Mention and refute opposing views: E-juice still has to be bought. While this is true, it is much cheaper to buy e-juice than to buy equivalent number of cigarette packs.

V. Conclusion

  1. Thesis restatement: This paper compared traditional smoking to vaping in terms of safety, utility, and cost.
  2. Restatement of main reasons: The evaluation revealed that vaping is much better than traditional smoking because it is safer, cheaper, and more practical.
  3. Closing statement: Vaping seems to be the perfect alternative to traditional smoking. Maybe it is time governments focused on convincing traditional smokers to become vapers.

Evaluation Essay Example

Now that you have seen the evaluation essay outline sample above, you should be able to create your own for your evaluation essay. If you have already done so, check out the evaluation essay sample below to get inspired to write your own evaluation essay.

Title: Why vaping is better than traditional smoking

There are over 10 million vapers in the US alone and the number is rapidly increasing. The number of vapers is rapidly increasing because it is the perfect alternative to traditional smoking. Unlike traditional smoking which is harmful, vaping is not harmful. Traditional smoking is harmful because it involves smoking dried tobacco, and dried tobacco is known to negatively affect the body and the lungs. Vaping is not harmful because it involves the use of harmless water-based e-juices instead of tobacco. The fact that vaping does not involve the use of harmful tobacco makes it perfect for those who want to quit smoking cigarettes. Additionally, the fact that vaping does not have the issue of secondhand smoke, also makes it perfect for traditional smokers who want to protect their families. This essay will evaluate vaping in terms of safety, utility, and cost to show that it is much better than traditional smoking.

In terms of safety, vaping is 95 percent safer than traditional smoking. This is according to a 2015 study by the agency in charge of public health in England – Public Health England. Why is vaping 95 percent safer than traditional smoking? Well, it is because vaping does not involve inhaling burning tobacco the way smoking does. It involves vaporizing harmless water-based e-juices in a pen. The e-juices are usually made of vegetable glycerin or propylene glycol. These are substances that are harmless according to the Food and Drug Administration (On Vaping, 2018). Therefore, if someone wants to smoke without actually smoking or getting harmful tobacco smoke into their lungs, they can do it by vaping. Moreover, one more thing that makes vaping safer than traditional smoking is the fact that vaping does not come with the issue of secondhand smoke.

With regards to utility, you can vape (use e-cigarettes) in more places than you can smoke. Nowadays, just about every country around the world has restrictions on smoking especially in public spaces. Defying smoking bans can result in a fine or even a jail term in many jurisdictions. This is because in most places around the world, traditional smoking has been recognized as dangerous and harmful to both smokers and those passing by. Therefore, to protect the citizens (especially non-smokers) from the harmful effects of smoke, many cities and countries have smoking bans in place. However, this is not the case for e-cigarettes/vapes. In most countries across the world, there are no bans on vaping. This means that you can use vapes in more places than you can smoke. In other words, vaping is more practical than traditional smoking.

Finally, compared to traditional smoking, vaping is quite cheap. It costs much less to vape than to use cigarettes. So for people who spend tens of dollars every month and would like to spend much less per month on smoking, vaping is the way to go. In figures, a vaping starter kit costs about $20 and it can last for weeks while a pack of cigarettes costs about $14 and it doesn’t last for a week. And the best thing about using vapes is that you can create your own e-juices. In other words, once you purchase the vaping starter kit, you do not need to spend money on anything else expensive to continue vaping.

In conclusion, vaping is more beneficial than traditional smoking in terms of safety, utility, and cost. Vaping is much safer than traditional smoking. Vaping is allowed in more places than smoking. And vaping costs much less than smoking per month. In light of these facts, governments should run campaigns to target smokers and convince them to try vaping. This could help save millions of lives and reduce cases of lung and mouth cancer.

References

On Vaping.  (2018). E-juice and you.  Retrieved from https://onvaping.com/guide/beginners-guide-to-vaping/ch-6-e-juice-and-you/

Public Health England.  (2015). E-cigarettes around 95% less harmful than tobacco estimates landmark review.  Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-less-harmful-than-tobacco-estimates-landmark-review

100 Plus Evaluation Essay Topics and Ideas

Here is a list of 100+ exciting evaluation essay topics. Use these topics are inspiration to come up with your own evaluation essay topic. Or simply choose one to help you compose a simple yet brilliant evaluation essay in a flash.

  1. Education in the UK versus the US
  2. Public schools versus private schools
  3. Bitcoins versus fiat money
  4. How smartwatches can promote a healthy life
  5. Effects of coronavirus pandemic on the tourism industry
  6. The American education system and its impact on kids
  7. The benefits of homeschooling
  8. The importance of standardized tests
  9. The impact of boarding schools on child development
  10. Importance of play for young children
  11. Why was jewelry important for the Aztecs?
  12. Evaluate the influence of impressionism and surrealism on society
  13. Discuss Da Vinci’s most famous painting The Last Supper
  14. Has technology negatively affected art?
  15. Discuss Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling painting
  16. Is the use of social media art?
  17. What role did women play in the Birth of Venus?
  18. How is love portrayed in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet?
  19. What is so intriguing about Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?
  20. How did Picasso revolutionize art?
  21. The impact of the Nobel Peace Prize?
  22. How did Isaac Newton change science?
  23. What contributions did Einstein make to science?
  24. Nikola Tesla’s most famous invention
  25. How nuclear energy changed the world
  26. Why antibiotics have made the world a better place
  27. How penicillin changed medicine
  28. The legacy of American industrialization
  29. Impact of World War II on science
  30. James Watt’s most famous achievements
  31. What requirements should potential Olympians meet?
  32. Is swimming perfect for children?
  33. Should doping be criminalized?
  34. Review of soccer development in the USA
  35. Why is soccer the most popular sport in the world?
  36. How comes basketball is a global sport but baseball isn’t?
  37. What is the difference between the Real Madrid and the Barcelona way of play?
  38. Assess Jurgen Klopp’s work in Liverpool over the last three years?
  39. Can global sport competitions bring peace?
  40. Evaluate the difference between successful and non-successful athletes?
  41. Evaluate Picasso’s Guernica.
  42. How is time portrayed in The Persistence of Memory.
  43. Evaluate Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.
  44. What makes Rembrandt’s art pieces to stand out?
  45. Evaluate the representation of political leaders by Velazquez.
  46. Discuss the controversy surrounding Triumph of the Will
  47. How is music used in the Seven Samurai?
  48. What film revolutionized animation and how?
  49. To read a book or to watch its movie?
  50. Examine the legacy of the work The Arrival of a Train.
  51. What is it like watching a live NBA finals game?
  52. Analyze the performance of Stephen Curry in the 2022 NBA season.
  53. Analyze the performance of Karim Benzema in the 2022 Champions League season.
  54. What are the health benefits of running marathons?
  55. Evaluate the performance of Eliud Kipchoge at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
  56. Should women athletes be paid the same as male athletes?
  57. Discuss the controversy surrounding athletic scholarships
  58. Do athletes deserve over 100-million dollar contracts?
  59. Should transgender athletes compete against girls?
  60. Basketball versus baseball for children?
  61. Evaluate the positives of dancing ballet
  62. Discuss how mental health affects the performance of athletes?
  63. How does diet impact and athletes performance?
  64. Is snorkeling a true sport?
  65. Can sports car drivers be considered athletes?
  66. Is doping a major issue in basketball?
  67. Which sport has the best fans: NFL or MLB?
  68. Review the diet of athletes training for marathons
  69. Should boys be ballerinas?
  70. What are the health benefits of Zumba?
  71. Review the American education curriculum
  72. Review inclusivity in your college
  73. Pros and cons of earning a Bachelor’s degree
  74. Are education programs for disabled children working?
  75. What is the importance of joining school clubs?
  76. Review the importance of sorority houses
  77. How does community service help students?
  78. Discuss the effectiveness of detention as punishment
  79. Examine the factors that affect student performance
  80. What does a substitute teacher need to succeed?
  81. Nike versus Adidas; which company is better?
  82. IPhone versus Samsung, what brand makes the best phones?
  83. BMW versus Mercedes, what brand makes the best luxury cars?
  84. China versus the United States, who will emerge the victor in the global power race?
  85. Democracy versus dictatorship, which is the best system for a developing country?
  86. Evaluate the differences between capitalism and socialism
  87. Evaluate the differences between capitalism and communism
  88. Discuss the impact of Universal Basic Income
  89. Oil wealth in the Middle East versus oil wealth in Africa
  90. Evaluate the education system in Japan
  91. Analyze Carver’s Cathedral and its imagery?
  92. Examine the narrator in The Book Thief
  93. Evaluate Ray Bradbury’s All Summer in a Day
  94. Evaluate Isabel Allende’s City of Beasts
  95. Review the narrator’s development in the Invisible Man
  96. Examine how war is portrayed in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
  97. Discuss realistic representation in Amaya Amador’s Cipotes
  98. Examine the setting in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
  99. Review conflicts in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
  100. Evaluate the key themes in Pride and Prejudice
  101. Discuss the similarity between Christianity and Buddhism

Final Words

We hope this essay covered everything you needed to know about how to write an evaluation essay. It is also our hope that you can now write an evaluation essay from scratch.

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