Peer review workshop guidelines:

1)      Give positive and negative responses.

2)      Be honest, tell what doesn’t work and why.

3)      Use examples from the essay of why it doesn’t work – be specific.

4)      Use end comments as a general response

5)      Present ideas for development and improvement

6)      Realize that this is not a finished piece

7)      [Question to answer:] Where does this need more development?

Read a minimum of one time all the way through without making comments. Then go back and comment in the margins. Read a minimum of twice altogether. Remember – you are a respondent, not an evaluator. For now, don’t worry about grammar and spelling issues.

Your remarks should focus on your reactions to the writing rather than on evaluation, and on the paper rather than on the writer. Instead of saying or writing: “Your introduction was boring”, you could say, “my mind tended to wander at the beginning – nothing caught my attention.” Instead of “your second paragraph doesn’t make sense,” you might say, I wasn’t sure of the point there, so I got confused. Your oral or written comments should be as specific as possible. A comment like “sounds good to me” is not as helpful as saying, “I like the way you made those interpretive leaps from your observations at the end of the piece. It made sense to me.

 

Writer _______________________________Reviewer _______________________

 

Where are you pulled into the essay as a reader? Where do you lose focus as a reader?

 

Where do you need more observational details?

 

Where can you suggest more development of ideas and analytical development?

 

What else – as a reader – do you want to know?