After reading an interesting and poignant article or, for example, watching an up-to-date video on the Internet, there is often a desire to somehow react to their content - to express your consent or to object to the judgments and conclusions of the author or actors. The most natural and accessible way to do this is to give your comment on what you read, watched, heard. What is the best way and to the point to comment on the text or video that touched you? To do this, it will not be superfluous to adhere to the following principles.
It is necessary
Elementary skills in working with texts and other types of information material: the ability and desire to analyze, make value judgments about the content of materials, formulate your position
Instructions
Step 1
First of all, it is necessary to clearly understand what is the main problem of the text or material of this or that format (audio, video). It is important to immediately objectively assess how competent you are in this problem and related topics, and then give a preliminary assessment to the author, the storyline, the actors. Such restraint will help you decide whether to write a detailed commentary. It is possible that you can limit yourself to short remarks of bewilderment to start a discussion of the published material.
Step 2
If you are confident in the topic, then you need to track the entire logical chain of reasoning of the author (from paragraph to paragraph) or the storyline of the video (from scene to scene). Already here you can find some inconsistencies in the argumentation, note unsuccessful comparisons, images, scenes, etc. Either express your agreement with the arguments, scenario; add to them some of your judgments and suitable facts for illustration. This will constitute the first and, perhaps, the longest part of the commentary.
Step 3
After objections and / or approvals (in which the commentator's attitude to the content of the material will already be manifested and the evidence base for the comment will be indicated), clearly formulate your vision of the problem as a whole, and then offer yourself possible ways to solve it.
Step 4
There is a reason to add to the commentary or write at the very end of it questions in which the commentator's bewilderment about ambiguities and any strange examples, statements, scenes present in the material would be expressed. Of course, this can be done in the course of further discussion with other readers or viewers, but in the commentary itself, they will give it a debatable, non-dogmatic flavor. In addition, they will significantly enliven his style, serve as a stimulus for discussion for others. There is no doubt that these principles (albeit somewhere in an abbreviated form) can be applied not only to serious articles, but also, in fact, to other comments and detailed remarks. In any case, following these simple rules clearly increases the chance of getting intellectual joy and inner satisfaction both from the written commentary and from the discussion that may arise around the commented material.
