Tips to Writing your Critique Paper This paper offers some easy-to-follow steps

Tips to Writing your Critique Paper
This paper offers some easy-to-follow steps to help you organize, write, and submit your paper.
1. The paper should focus on any emerging or evolving development, innovation, or new transportation service whether it be a transportation utility (moving vehicles) or transportation facilities (infrastructure). The term paper is a critical review of published journal articles or peer-reviewed materials concerning your selected transportation topic. It is a critical review because you are expected to read a minimum of three journal articles including web-based materials and other sources
to be used for the review. Critical review means that you will collect, select, and study relevant materials that will provide adequate background and foundation on the topic or subject you chose for the paper. Here, you should be able to evaluate what you read based on certain criteria or guideposts. You should apply ‘critical thinking’ which means you have an open and analytical mind plus a working
knowledge or background of the subject under study.
2. You have to analyze and evaluate the information and make sense of what you are reading. Set the context and/or basis for your assessment (criteria). An example of a context is if you use the concept of sustainable transportation or sustainable mobility from the experience of the developed world.
3. Before you proceed with the review, you need to read, synthesize, and relate the key points raised by the authors as they relate to the selected topic or subject of your paper. For example, if you believe that the future transportation wave will be electric ‘mini-aircars’, then look for related published material about it if the likely leading-
edge technology in the future by searching for transportation journals or geography journals or even engineering journals and major science journals such as AMBIO or ‘Nature’, the Economist, Harvard Business Review and so on. From the web, you may surf the sites of OECD,
HOFSTRA University, or the global motor manufacturers from GM to Chrysler and others. Or, if your topic is on the proliferation of hybrid vehicles that function somewhat like cars driven by James Bond; or, you may envision a rise of hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles or electric vehicles but that you make the argument that it will offer a sustainable picture of transport 30 years from now in the developing world such as
China? Or is it really possible to reduce cars at the curb in a car economy like Canada and the US? Is the policy of EV (electric vehicles viable from California by 2035 and beyond? Could we soon have flying cars and flying cabs like the Jetsons? Another example of a topic may be a significant reduction in air travel time and
significant increase in telecommunications, given the wider use of teleconferencing and video conferencing today. What else is new 35 years to the future? Journal articles offer more recent and focused reviews and analysis of specific topics and fields. If you have not formed your own ideas similar to those being explored by TESLA Motors or by Boeing, an alternative is to collect the views and projects
already presented by inventors, transport scholars and engineers as they related to what will be the future or the ‘it’ transport technology or service of the future. There are thousands of journals available on-line and in hard copies that you may consult to give you an idea of what our transport world could be! All you need is to read three journal articles including one web-based material for review! But of course, you need to have at least 7 items consulted to write a good review!
4. After doing a critical review of selected and published literature, you are ready to speculate, build your own scenario which could either be an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future transport world 30 years from now. You need to do some research or background reading to increase your knowledge base concerning your critique paper for you to have a robust, well-written review paper. But be sure to use scholarly journals and materials including electronically published papers.
5. Outline and write your term paper in no more than 5 pages, single-spaced in 12 fonts text. First, provide a summary of articles or materials reviewed for the paper. Then briefly summarize what all the authors said about the topic or subject you are writing about by stating the pertinence, relevance, and usefulness of the material to your
critique as it relates to the future of transportation. Give a summary of what the authors asserted, proposed, or advocated or even envisioned at the time of their writing. What is the main thesis, argument, contribution to knowledge about the subject? State what conclusion was drawn by each of the author(s)? Then quickly make your own analysis and assessment. Is there something new that we did not know before?
6. You may limit your topic to a specific phenomenon or subject say, on the use of hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles (hydrogen, gasoline or natural gas) or making ‘smart vehicles or electric vehicles available in OECD countries and other countries (if not the rest of the world) built with high-tech crash avoidance systems and high-tech communication systems. As Black (2003, p. 337) pointed out, ideas similar to the
‘neighborhood electric vehicles’ that are rechargeable at park-and-ride stations, or more remotely controlled vehicles (that run like ‘Kitt’ in a TV movie series) could be the way for future transport.