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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Peer-review Guidelines

Peer-review Guidelines

Use this guidelines to respond to your peers' drafts.

1.     Read the essay quickly and see if you clearly understand the main points. Did the paper flow well on your first reading? Briefly describe what part(s) of the essay flowed well and what part(s) seemed choppy or incoherent. What strategy(ies) are used to organize the information gathered from a variety of sources? Suggest some ways to improve the overall organization of the paper.
2.     Now read slowly. Read the essay up until you identify the writer's thesis.  Stop reading at this point and answer the following questions:
a.     Does the introduction give you enough background to understand the thesis?
b.     Is the background too broad or merely tangentially relevant to the thesis?
c.     Does the intro provide relevant background about writing in a particular profession or discipline and identify a problem or gap?
d.     Does it provide a brief description of the methods used to gather relevant information to address the problem and develop an informational report?
e.     Is the thesis clear? Does it make an argument/claim or does it state the most important information about writing in a profession/discipline?

                        Provide suggestions for improving the introductory material.

3.     Now read through the paper, using the point-predict method.  Pause every 1-2 sentences or so and summarize the writer's main argument and predict what will come next.  Clearly identify any places on the paper where your expectations as a reader were not met or where you were unclear on the writer's point.  If possible, indicate what you were expecting.
4.     Does each paragraph adhere to a single main idea?  Note any paragraphs that seem to have multiple topics competing for attention.
5.     Are paragraphs connected with transitions?  Identify any places where transitions between paragraphs can be improved.
6.     Do paragraphs make good use of repetition of key ideas?  Note any places where the writer might improve coherence by repeating a key term or synonym.
7.     Does the writer provide sufficient evidence for each of the main points?  Note any places where you would like to see more evidence.  Make suggestions for what type of evidence the writer might include.
8.     Does the writer use quotations and paraphrases of sources effectively?  Are the quotations relevant?
9.     Is the overall order of paragraphs in the paper logical?  Do the paragraphs in the body of the paper follow the order suggested by the thesis?   Does the overall organization seem to have some sort of ordering principle—such as comparison and contrast, steps/processes, etc?
10.  Does the author focus on features of writing or the aspects of writing process in analyzing written sources? How could he/she improve the analysis?
11.  How well does the writer integrate the information gathered from interviews with the information drawn from analyses of the writings?
12.  Does the essay have an interesting conclusion that does not simply repeat the main points of the essay?
13.  Does the writer include a correctly documented works cited page?
14.  Do you see any pattern errors (grammatical) that the author is making? Can you offer some suggestions to improve?
15.  In what particular aspect(s) of the paper has the author done an excellent job?
16.  What are the three most significant changes the writer could make to improve this paper?

After reading and analyzing your peers’ papers, write a review for each of the papers focusing on the following aspects:
1.     What is your overall impression?
2.     What are the 3-5 most important areas for improvement?
Your review should be at least 3 paragraphs (300 words). After you finish writing, post it as a comment to your peer's blog.

For the group conference with the instructor, you will have to bring at least 4 main suggestions on your peer’s paper. These suggestions have to be concrete and specific. That means, you cannot simply make general comments like you can improve the organization of your essay or you need to improve transition. You need to show where and provide some concrete ways  for improvement.
Also, bring at least three questions that you want to ask your instructor and your peer about your own paper.


1 comment:

  1. • Need a conclusion.
    • Sources sited page.
    • Improved transitions between paragraph 4&5,5&6.
    • Make second quote more related to writing.
    • Include interview questions.
    My over overall impression would be that the paper is pretty good around, but there are just a few things you could tweak a little to make the paper flow better. Other than these few points I think your paper hits the points pretty well. My first concern would be the conclusion, because your last paragraph seemed to support another form of an academic source. I think you need to keep that paragraph, but also add another paragraph as the conclusion where it wraps up your main points. Without the conclusion you kind of keep the reader hanging. Then my next concern was your sources cited page. It just seems to be a very crucial piece of info when you are quoting individuals in your writing. Even if you can’t do it 100% correct just try to do as well as you can. Another point would be to try to include a little bit of your interview questions to guide some of your paper about the types of writing the business owner perform. Also with your second quote try to relate it a little bit more to the writing aspect of what it takes to coach the all starz. It seems to kind of throw me off track a little when I read it and breaks up the flow of the piece. Another thing you should do to make your paper flow a little bit better would be to improve the transitions between paragraphs 4&5 and 5&6. I feel like 5&6 need more improvement, it seems as if it just jumps to the next paragraph.

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