Reading and responding to your peers’ work

The assignment of reading and responding to your peers’ work has two purposes. One reading others’ essays helps you understand how others have approached the same assignment. Sometimes it’s easier to see what’s working and now working in someone else’s writing than in our own. But then you can apply those revelations to your own writing.

I am not saying to copy what someone wrote (in particular their content) but rather you can emulate their strategies for composing. The act of providing feedback to someone else’s writing helps you to think about your own revision strategies.

Logistics

· For each of your peers assigned to the same group as you, please post your 1-page response to their essay using the below guidelines. Due Tuesday July 5th by 2pm (prior to class).

Guidelines

This process asks you to both comment on the essay documents, called line comments or in-text comments, as well as write a thoughtful letter to your peers that collects your thoughts on their writing.

While reading consider the following:

· Try to identify the thesis or main argument being made in the paper.

· Then ask yourself how well the argument is being supported with evidence from the text.

· Does the argument make sense, is it logical? Are the organization and transitions clear? In other words, evaluate the writer’s pathos.

· Does the writer represent the text they are evaluating fairly? Or is there misrepresentation of the text? In other words, evaluate the writer’s ethos.

· Does the writer create a “so what” conclusion? Evaluate the writer’s pathos.

Write a 1-page response for each essay in your group. 

· In an informal response, summarize your thoughts on the essay. Go into greater detail about what you noticed while reading the paper. Pay most of your attention to the strength of argument. Be sure to include both positive feedback and constructive criticism.

· You could also consider the following questions. What were you confused about? What would you like to see expanded upon? Was there anything that you thought needed to be cut out, for example, excessive or unnecessary repetition? What questions do you have? What parts of the paper did you think were best?

· Remember that this is not your essay. You may not be able to address every problem that you see and you cannot change the writing to the way that you would write it. Choose just a few aspects of the paper that you think are most important and address these aspects clearly and thoroughly.

Be clear about why you found a particular part of the essay problematic and give clear suggestions about what the writer might do differently.

· Conversely, you may have trouble finding any problems with your peer’s essay. If you don’t find any problems, choose a few aspects of the paper that you like most. Point these out and be clear about why you like The writer may not realize which sections are most effective and well-written, so you should give them specific feedback in order for them to continue employing these techniques in the future.