Why we do Peer Review:

  • Better, critical readers
  • Ideas for your own work
  • Separate your work from yourself

Rules of the road:

Neither tell someone their work is perfect nor tell them their work is garbage: Use each other for ideas and to help each other refine your work for a better paper and thus, a better grade.

Directions:

  • Read the rubric as a group, so you know what to look for as you’re reading
  • Distribute all the essays, so each person has an essay from each person in the group
  • Pick one person to begin
  • Read the essay once silently, without making any marks on the text
  • Read it again
  • Make notations of things that work well and why
  • Note where and why you were confused. How would you fix it?
  • Don’t feel the need to copyedit the work, but feel free to point out minor mistakes (MLA, etc.) Almost always, the comma goes inside quotes, i.e. Richard Rodriguez’s essay, “The Achievement of Desire,” which was …
  • Things to keep a look out for:
  • Lapses in academic tone, including the use of you/your, an overabundance of rhetorical questions, and huge claims that use words like always, never, etc.
  • A misplaced focus. Does it read like an argument or an analysis? The prompt asks for the latter.
  • Specificity for an unfamiliar audience. If you hadn’t read/seen the texts, would you understand what’s going on? Is there any pertinent info left out? Conversely, is there too much summary and not enough analysis?
  • Quotes that need set up, or phrases/sentences that lack citations.
  • As a group, discuss the paper under review by going through each point on the rubric:
  • In each category, briefly discuss what you think the writer did particularly well (be specific! I.e. laid out the argument, developed an academic tone, wrote a clear purpose statement, etc.)
  • Briefly discuss what you think can be improved or what confused you. Point directly to the sentence, and suggest how this may be improved. Also point to places in the text where the writer can add.
  • The writer should take notes on his/her own copy for reference later, and is encouraged to ask questions. After discussion is finished, return the essays to the author and move on to the next person in the group.