A Critical Analysis Self-Check for CIPD Assignments

The hardest draft to judge for critical analysis is your own, and the reason is structural, not a lack of skill. When you reread your own work, you read your intentions, not your words: you know the judgement you meant to imply, so your brain supplies it, and the paragraph feels analytical even when nothing analytical made it onto the page. The assessor has only the words, which is why feedback so often says too descriptive about work its author was sure had depth.

The fix is to stop rereading and start auditing: running specific, mechanical checks that look at what the words actually do, not what you meant them to do. This guide sets out six such checks, each with what to look for and how to repair a failure, then a method for running them as a single full pass. They are deliberately blunt instruments. Blunt is what you need, because subtle self-assessment is exactly the faculty that fails on your own writing.

Check one: the verbs

Scan each paragraph for its verbs and connectives, ignoring meaning entirely. Reporting language, such as is, has, involves, consists of, includes and was introduced, marks description. Reasoning language, such as because, suggests, however, therefore, assumes, depends on and outweighs, marks analysis. You are not counting to a quota; you are looking at the balance. A paragraph answering an analyse or evaluate task in which reporting verbs dominate has almost certainly stayed descriptive, whatever it feels like to its author.

To fix a failure, do not sprinkle reasoning words over the existing sentences, because a however that connects two facts is decoration, not analysis. Instead, ask of the paragraph's main fact: so what, compared to what, and under what conditions. Write the answers as new sentences, and the reasoning verbs will arrive on their own, attached to actual reasoning.

Check two: the judgement

Go to the end of every section that answers an evaluate or assess task and look for the position. Not a summary of what the section covered: a committed, stated judgement about worth, fit or priority that the section has earned. If you cannot underline the sentence where you land, the section has done the weighing and declined the verdict, which loses the very marks the verb offered.

To fix it, force the one-sentence version: on balance, X, because Y. Write that sentence even if it feels blunt, place it at the end of the section, and check the material above it actually supports it. If it does not, the problem is upstream, and the section needs its evidence rebalanced before the judgement will stand.

Check three: the counterview

Search the draft for any point where an opposing reading appears: a source that disagrees with your position, a limitation conceded, a rival interpretation of the same evidence. If every voice in a section agrees with you, no weighing was possible, and the assessor has no way to see judgement happening. Unbroken agreement is one of the most reliable markers of descriptive work dressed as argument.

To fix it, find the strongest reasonable objection to your main claim, state it fairly in one or two sentences, and answer it: show why your position survives, or refine the position to absorb what the objection gets right. One well-handled counterview does more for a section's criticality than three additional supporting sources.

Check four: the evidence weight

Look at each citation and ask what work it is doing. Weighed evidence comes with a signal of how much it can bear: a comment on its method, sample, currency or fit to your context, or its position relative to another source. Cited-but-unweighed evidence just sits in brackets at the end of a sentence, decorating a claim that would read identically without it. A draft can be fully referenced and completely uncritical at the same time.

To fix it, pick the two or three sources your argument leans on hardest and add a clause of appraisal to each: what kind of evidence it is, what it can establish, and where it stops. Leave minor supporting citations plain; weighing everything shallowly is worse than weighing the load-bearing sources properly.

Check five: the assumptions

Ask of each main claim: what would have to be true for this to hold, and have I said so? Drafts fail this check silently, because assumptions are invisible to the person making them. Common unexamined assumptions in CIPD work include that a practice working elsewhere will work here, that survey responses reflect the whole workforce, that a model built in one era or sector transfers to another, and that what an organisation intends is what employees experience.

To fix a failure, name the assumption in the text and test it: state the condition your claim depends on, then say whether it holds in your context and how you know. Surfacing an assumption and confirming it still counts as critical analysis; the credit is for the examination, not for finding a problem.

Check six: the so what

Read the final sentence of every paragraph. A paragraph that lands ends on a consequence: what this means for the organisation, the argument or the decision at hand. A paragraph that trails off ends on its last fact. Strings of trailing paragraphs are how a draft full of sound material still reads as a list, because nothing ever arrives anywhere.

To fix it, append the consequence: which means, so the priority is, which strengthens the case for. If you cannot complete such a clause honestly, the paragraph has no point yet, and it either needs one or needs cutting.

The full pass: running all six

1. Finish the draft completely, then leave it for at least a day; the checks depend on reading your words cold, as a stranger would.
2. Run the verbs check across the whole draft first, marking every paragraph where reporting language dominates; this gives you a map of the risk areas.
3. Run the judgement check on every section led by an evaluative command verb, and write any missing on-balance sentences before doing anything else.
4. Run the counterview and evidence-weight checks together, section by section, since both concern how sources behave in the argument.
5. Run the assumption check on your main claims only; three claims examined properly beat ten touched lightly.
6. Run the so-what check as a final read of last sentences only, ignoring everything else in each paragraph.
7. Fix in that order, judgement first, and rerun the verbs check at the end as confirmation, because repairs made by the other checks shift the verb balance on their own.

A printable version of this self-check is available in the site's resources if you want the six checks beside your draft rather than on another screen.

A worked example

The following is entirely fictional: Jonah is an invented learner, Merrow and Vale is a made-up professional services firm, and the draft paragraph is constructed to fail. Jonah's evaluate task concerns the firm's hybrid working policy, and his draft paragraph reads: Merrow and Vale introduced its hybrid policy in 2022. Staff attend the office two days per week, with teams choosing which days. The policy includes a home working allowance and revised meeting guidelines. Internal surveys show most staff are satisfied with the arrangement.

The paragraph fails three checks. The verbs check: introduced, attend, includes and show are all reporting language, with not one reasoning connective. The counterview check: every sentence points the same way, and no cost, limitation or dissenting reading appears. The so-what check: the paragraph ends on its last fact, a survey result, with no consequence drawn.

Jonah's repaired version: Merrow and Vale's hybrid policy has held staff satisfaction, but satisfaction is the wrong test of a policy whose stated aim was collaboration. The two-day pattern with team-chosen days keeps colleagues aligned within teams, yet because teams chose different days, cross-team contact now depends on scheduling luck, which the meeting guidelines manage rather than solve. The satisfaction results also carry less weight than they appear to, since staff are assessing an arrangement that benefits them personally, and no measure of collaboration sits alongside them. On balance the policy succeeds on its secondary aim and remains unproven on its primary one, so the next review should measure cross-team working directly rather than rerunning the satisfaction survey. The facts are almost unchanged; what was added is a claim, a complication, a weighing of the evidence, and a landing.

Common pitfalls

• Checking while drafting, which splits attention and spoils both jobs; draft freely, then audit cold
• Fixing failures by adding hedges, so claims become vaguer instead of better defended; the repair for a weak claim is evidence and reasoning, not softer wording
• Mistaking length for depth, and padding a failing paragraph instead of making it argue; a longer description is still a description
• Running all six checks in one undifferentiated reread, which collapses back into ordinary rereading; each check works because it looks for one thing
• Treating a clean pass as a guarantee; the checks catch the absence of critical analysis, and your current brief and centre guidance remain the authority on what your task requires

Go deeper

The self-check tells you where a draft falls short; the rest of this cluster teaches the skill itself. What Is Critical Analysis in CIPD? A Complete Guide is the hub, covering the reasoning moves behind all six checks and a method for building criticality in from the start. Descriptive vs Critical Writing: Side-by-Side CIPD Examples shows exactly what passing and failing paragraphs look like next to each other, and is the natural companion to the verbs check in particular.

If you run the checks and cannot see how to make the repairs, our analysis support offers coaching on these exact techniques and a straight-talking review of your draft against them, while every judgement, sentence and submission remains your own work.