Peer Review Guidelines

Use these instructions for providing feedbacks to your peers' first drafts.

A. These are some questions/points to think about while reading the paper. Whenever the instruction says "write," write a brief comments on the margin of the paper. 

1.     Read the report 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? Make some notes to 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 (not as a claim, but as a statement of findings).  Stop reading at this point and answer the following questions:

a.     Does the introduction give you enough background to understand the possible direction of the whole essay?

b.     Is the background too broad or merely tangentially relevant to the main purpose of the paper?

c.     Does the intro provide relevant background about writing in a particular profession or discipline?

d.     Does it provide a brief description of the methods used to gather relevant information to address the problem/enquiry and develop an analytical report?

e.     Is the thesis/statement of finding clear? Does it make an argument/claim or does it state the most important information about writing in a profession/discipline? This paper is not supposed to make an argument. 

Write down some points to provide suggestions for improving the introductory part.

3.     Now read through the paper, using the point-predict method.  Pause every 1-2 sentences or so and summarize the writer's main point 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. Mark those places and provide some feedbacks. 
6.  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?

7.     Does the writer provide sufficient evidences 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.     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.  Does the essay have an interesting conclusion that does not simply repeat the main points of the essay?

12.  Does the writer include a correctly documented “References” page?

13.  Do you see any pattern errors (grammatical) in the paper? Can you offer some suggestions for improvement?

14.  In what particular aspect(s) of the paper has the author done an excellent job?

B. For your written review:

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? You can take assignment rubrics (analysis and synthesis, organization, use of sources, and completeness and mechanics) as a basis for your suggestions. Your 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.

Your review should be at least 3 substantive paragraphs (most probably 4-6), first paragraph stating your overall impression and a few other paragraphs explaining 3-5 suggestions for improvement). After you finish writing, post it as a comment to your peer’s blog.