critique 2.0

   Although the article entitled ‘ It is still beauty before brains’ by Chok Suat Ling makes sense, but the first  paragraph doesn’t fit with the last paragraph. The first paragraph talks about the 50th National Women Day celebration, whereas the last paragraph talks whether beauty is a blessing or curse which does not seems to be compatible.

         Furthermore, I think the author should see this problem not just from one side but from others' point of view as well.  Rather than making her own assumption that everyone considers beauty first, she should realise the existence of certain people who give more importance for brain than beauty.

        Besides that, I definitely would say that the author fails to define certain hard words. One such example would be 'corpus collasum'. I am very sure only people of medical or scientific background will understand this term, as it is not an English word but a medical term.  I think the article would be more interesting to read if we know what we are reading. So, it would have been best if the author was to give the definition of the term, 'corpus collasum'.

          In a nutshell, this article needs to be polished a lot more but definitely is able to create an awareness among the readers about discrimination towards women by judging them based on their physical appearance.

critique 1.0

  The article entitled ‘ It is still beauty before brains’ by Chok Suat Ling is very clear,  that is the words used are common and easily understood. The choice of words used in the article makes the readers to have a clear understanding about the article. But ambiguity arises  among readers when scientific term is used . For example, the usage of the word ‘corpus collasum’ certainly will create a confusion in readers’ minds.

          Moreover, this article certainly needs further elaboration. The examples given are not illustrated in detail. Furthermore , personally I think that the examples given are not reliable. It would have been more reliable if the author was to give the details of the source from where she gathered those information. For instance, she must have stated the name of the women magazine and the date the magazine was published. By this we can conclude that this article is not very accurate in providing the examples.

          The article is also not precise. Throughout the article, the settings such as time and place are not stated.  For example, the author stated that there was once only 10% of women undergraduates, but didn’t state the year and place. 

        In short, this article lacks many aspects but definitely induces the readers' mind to think of the issue that is being discussed.

Critique 2.0

                The article “It is still beauty before brains”  depicts about the prejudiced judgement of women nowadays due to their appearances rather than their competency.

                The language used by the author is simple and well-expressed. Why do I say so? Readers can’t and won’t understand what “corpus callosum” means even if the author did manage to define it. Rather than confusing readers about the meaning of the aforementioned word, the author chose an indirect way to express her ideas without giving rise to misconceptions amongst the readers. She used the word directly and expressed it by saying “wired” differently in order to give readers an indirect clue as to what the word means.

            The author sounds cynical when she brings out the matter of beauty pageant. She argues that the contest is mostly based on beauty and beauty alone. However, she’s not being well-grounded as beauty pageant contests nowadays do have many criteria besides beauty, they do take many other talents and skills into account. Moreover, she mentioned that beauty seems increasingly more a curse, this particularly harsh tone indicates her extreme disapproval of beauty and its impact on women nowadays. Therefore I thoroughly believe that the author was biased towards beauty itself and regards beauty as a subject of her distaste. However, she managed to give the readers an insight on how this might lead to negative consequences to the society if nothing is being done about it.

            Hence, I believe that the author did what she thought was right by giving readers awareness on negative impacts of judgement by looks and appearances alone. She gave the society a sound message and pleads for the audience to stand up and take action before matters get out of hand. 

Critique

The author is clearly biased and judgmental towards a certain sex. While the author is busy mesmerizing in her way of stereotyping men by thinking that all men judge women by their beauty instead of skills and potential, she failed to comprehend and think further in many aspects of her own points.

First, women population has grown to close the gender gap. Even if men used to create a perception of "beauty equals to everything", that time is long gone. Since no sex has the majority, everyone has equal control over certain "thinking and traditions" and can opt to make beauty judgement obsolete. 

Second, women can opt for revolution to disregard beauty judgement. From the first point it is clear no sex have an advantage over another. Obviously females don't need men beauty judgement to survive in this world. But no revolution shown (NATO No Action Talk Only) shows no urgency in this issue, and it also shows that the judgement is not only important for men (to continue judging), but also as equal importance for women (to indulge, for the pretty ones).

The author clearly cannot represent the female community to mock the males, by one, her stereotyping and two, her inability to disregard the tradition of beauty judgement.

Critique 1.0 (Facebook)

     The article,"Downside Of Facebook" composed by Mary Schneider discusses mainly about the disadvantages of facebook in the point of view of the author.As a whole,I believe the author has not well organised her points as it is mostly scrambled up. Her points are not directly stated but are more probing based.For instance, "Like,Why not?Why would having a spliff(joint) stop you from getting on Facebook or sending your friends a text message,or vice versa?",this sentence does not clarify her point.

     Besides that, the evidence provided by the author to substantiate her points is not well supported.She has not provided information on the source of her evidence.This can be seen in the following sentences,"According to a recent report,less and less young people in the UK are turning to drugs,partly because they are too busy on Facebook or sending text messages" and "It could be ,if they are on Blackberry all the time ,that that's the way they socialise and communicate:you don't want to be doing that and having a spliff at the same time.Or so an expert said recently".

     Moreover,certain part of the article does not clearly convey the author's stand on the issue.The inaccurate usage of words makes it even more complicated.The part is as follows,"Of coure,after all that faffing around you might get online only to forget what it was that you wanted to sayon facebook.Then your bladder might take charge ,so all you get to write is,'Going for a pee,be back in a sec'."

     Hence,I believe that the author should get her facts straight and find the best method to convey her message before she publish an article out of it.

Critique 2 : “It is still beauty before brains” by Chok Suat Ling

   In the article “It is still beauty before brains” by Chok Suat Ling, the writer discusses about the unfair treatment that is received by females based on their appearance rather than their intelligence.

    The writer takes a strong stand in her article that women are being judged by their beauty, and it is unfair. Therefore, this perception should be changed.

      In this article, the writer chose to use the title “It is still beauty before brains”. The title is not very appropriate as the writer did not discuss much between the importance of beauty and intelligence. The writer also fail to state why intelligence should be highly regarded compared to beauty. Instead, the writer chose to talk about all aspect of women development but did no comparison between the importance of all those aspects and the importance of beauty itself.

     Other than that the language used in this article is simple and is well suited for general audience. Since the article is posted on New Straits Times, the language used is appropriate. This is because newspaper should be able to reach a wide audience by using simple and general terms in their language. However, some of the sentences used in the articles, for example: (So, why do we need men again?) are a bit harsh and may send a wrong message to the community. 

        Overall, the writer is elaborating about how women are being judged by their looks and how that is unfair. The language used in the article is simple and suitable for a wide audience. 

          The article entitled ‘ It is still beauty before brains’ by Chok Suat Ling is very clear,  that is the words used are common and easily understood. The choice of words used in the article makes the readers to have a clear understanding about the article. But ambiguity arises  among readers when scientific term is used . For example, the usage of the word ‘corpus collasum’ certainly will create a confusion in readers’ minds.

          Moreover, this article certainly needs further elaboration. The examples given are not illustrated in detail. Furthermore , personally I think that the examples given are not reliable. It would have been reliable if the author was to give the details of the source from where she gathered those information. For instance, she must have stated the name of the women magazine and the date the magazine was published. By this we can conclude that this article is not very accurate in providing the examples.

          The article is also not precise. Throughout the article, the settings such as time and place are not stated.  For example, the author stated that there was once only 10% of women undergraduates, but didn’t state the year and place.  Although the article makes sense, but the first  paragraph doesn’t fit with the last paragraph.

          In a nutshell, this article needs to be polished a lot more but definitely is able to create an awareness among the readers about discrimination towards women by judging them based on their physical appearance.