teaching with writing
Peer
Workshop:
Response
to First-Person
Accounts
of Place
Pamela Flash, Associate Director,
Center for Writing
The following
is a set of guidelines distributed to students when they exchange drafts.
Sooo,
now you have two or three drafts to work through. Give yourself enough
time to really focus on this—figure 30 minutes per draft. Remember
to make your comments legible—you might want to use a pencil—and
to focus on the BIG PICTURE issues rather than grammar and style.
- Begin
by writing your name and email address on the top right-hand corner
of each peer draft. That way, if there's any confusion later, your peer
can contact you to clear it up.
- Read through
the paper once quickly. Resist the temptation to jump in with specific
comments until after you've read through the whole paper once. Mark
passages you think you might like to return to later - either because
they interest you or confuse you. Put a wavy line under phrases or lines
that are difficult to follow, and then move on.
Now go back,
and draw out your comments further (write directly on the drafts):
- Scan the
paper and underline what you take to be the thesis.
- Note the
extent to which it seems to meet our criteria: non-obvious, debatable,
of reasonable scope. Suggestions?
- Make a
comment about its location. If it isn't until the end of the draft,
at what point might you have been reading along and wondered where you
were going? If it is located at the beginning of the draft, does it
seem abrupt? Does it give too much away too soon? What might you have
needed to hear about first?
- Next,
look at the summary.
- Note places
where you, as a stranger to the essay, become confused — perhaps
because the writer seems to have expected you to be already familiar
with the target essay.
- Note
places in which the summary gets caught up in laying out the plot rather
than in describing the author's work.
- Note any
places where the summary loses its neutral tone.
- Note
the amount of detail — does it give you enough of a sense
of the essay? Does it give you too much?
- Now get
into the main body of the paper.
- Place
a star (*) by points that interest you in this section and comment on
what you're interested in.
- Place
a question mark (?) beside large passages that you have difficulty
understanding, and a wavy line under shorter phrases/sentences that
you aren't following.
- Consider
the extent to which the discussion fulfills the promise made by the
thesis. What, if anything strays? What, if anything, would you like
to have heard more about?
- Note
places that might have been strengthened with quotes from the original.
- Does
this section of the paper seem focused and grow organically or
does it jump from point to point, like a list of different discussion
points? If the latter is true, which one or two points seem like the
best candidates for focus?
- Note
any places where your peer gets back into summarizing rather than developing
discussion. Do you feel that you are getting an organized analysis
or a guided tour back through the entire essay?
- Does the
essay seem complete, or would you like to see it develop into a larger
discussion of the thesis topic?
- Finally,
comment on the lead (first paragraph) and wrap-up (final
paragraph):
- On a scale
of 1-5 (5=high), how engaging and useful did you find the lead? Suggestions?
- If the
lead doesn't mention the author or essay title, does the paper get to
this information soon enough?
- Does
the wrap-up (final paragraph) "revisit" the thesis and synthesize
the other elements of discussion, or does it primarily repeat the thesis
or lead? What do you walk away from the lead understanding about the
essay?
On the
back of the paper, note answers to the following:
- What do
you take as the focus or main point of this draft?
- What,
specifically, interested you about the draft and/or target essay?
- What do
you suggest as the single most important revision your peer could make?
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