How do you write a critical analysis of an article? HELP

[OhBloodyElle]

I'm working on my essay for uni, and it involves critically analysing 2 papers. Plugging away and writing away but suddenly worried I'm not being either critical enough or analytical enough?

Now it's going round in my head and I'm wondering what it even means

I'm worried I'm just writing a bit of a summary of each article and then making a few suggestions of my own. Now wondering if I've gone about it all wrong.

What do I do? I'm halfway there, and don't have time to start fresh from scratch again.

And by counter arguing against yourself it means describing what the evidence highlights, but the saying something along the lines of, however whiteorange (2019) indicates this may result in inaccurate interpretation due to the ambiguity of the study conclusion.

God I miss writing essays. I'm away to look at postgrad courses. Thank you op.

Send us links to the articles in question, OP?

if I say "X article does a good job at identifying the major issues with maternal mortality, detailing the problems with A, B and C" and proceed to back that up....do I just turn around then and say, "however, X article is actually unsatisfactory because/??"

Yeah, basically.
Sometimes it helps to write your headline message in

What is your word limit?

I am not in this field at all, so excuse me.

But, arguing for and against is much easier than you'd think. It's natural to all of us to do this in pop culture contexts. Say someone asks you to recommend a TV series, or a film - you naturally say 'well, I love how it does x, but to be fair, most people hate y. Personally I don't mind so much when they do that thing in Season 5, but ...'.

You do not have to be more polarised than this in an academic essy. Students often think they must say 'I hate this, and this is wrong, and that is appalling'. But if you do that (as you say) there's no easy way to 'argue against' your original position. So, it is much easier to say 'Well, this bit is quite good, and it's valuable for these reasons. However, you could argue it's a bit limited, for these other reasons.'

I don't know if that is helpful at all, or if I am just wittering in the manner of the Arts person I am. But my students often worry about this issue of arguing against themselves, and I find it sometimes helps to explain they're not meant to be taking the position of judge and jury, but rather the position of a TV reviewer.

Thanks everyone! Great pointers on this thread as well as food for thought.

Went for a run and had a bath and dinner and suddenly feel clearer. I was overthinking things and getting in a flap.

Word count is 5000 words.