Critical Essay: Peer Review Workshop

As you know, the rough draft of your 4-to-6-page critical essay is due in class on Friday, September 27, 2002, for a peer review workshop that day. You must participate in this peer review workshop in order to turn in your critical essay; if you happen to miss class that day, you must contact the class (using the listserv) and arrange with someone to exchange drafts with you over the weekend. When you turn in your final draft of the critical essay, you must also turn in your first draft, your partner's comments on it using the form passed out on Wednesday, September 25, and your response to your partner's comments and the peer review session. As I will not be in class on Friday to answer questions you may have during the workshop, please bring them to Wednesday's class. This page is designed to be a reference to help you prepare for the peer review workshop. As such, it supplements the assignment sheet and advice pages on this web site.

Preparation

Authors should enter the peer review workshop willing to listen to and consider constructive criticism from their reviewers. They should also have questions they want the reviewer to consider and answer for them. They should not feel obligated to follow through on every single suggestion, but should take seriously all comments during the final revision process over the weekend.

Reviewers should make sure they understand the criteria for evaluation listed on the assignment sheet, as they will be asked to provide suggestions for improving the paper's argument, use of evidence, organization, and sentence-level prose. Rather than seeing themselves as copy editors or cheerleaders, they should see their role as providing an early warning system for serious problems and a sounding board to help the writer look objectively at his or her draft and figure out ways of improving it.

Very little high-quality writing takes place in a vacuum; virtually all professional writers write multiple drafts and actively seek out feedback from a variety of readers. That's why so many books have long acknowledgments sections. It's very difficult to step back from your own writing and imagine how somebody who didn't go through the process of writing it will look at it; it's very easy to ignore what you actually did write because you know what you meant to write. Over the course of your college career, it should become easier to become a better critical reader of your own writing; peer review workshops are one way to help you do this. So please come to Friday's workshop prepared to contribute actively, both as author and as reviewer.

Process

Since there are 23 people in the class, and hence should be 23 drafts to be workshopped, we should have 10 groups of 2 and one group of 3. Once you've broken up into groups, you should expect to devote about 20-25 minutes reading and taking notes on your partner's paper, and 5-10 minutes filling out the form you received during Wednesday's class. As you can see from the form itself, the questions ask you to respond honestly and comprehensively and constructively to the paper.

Some questions that reviewers should consider when reading and responding to the draft of the critical essay:

• Does the paper have a central argument? Is it clear from the beginning what text(s) the writer will be analyzing and why? Is the argument debate-able? (If there's no way someone could disagree with it, there's no need to make it--unless it can be debated, it's not an argument.)
• How persuasively is the argument supported? Are there analyses of particular scenes/incidents/passages (good), or just general pronouncements about the text as a whole (not so good)? Is there an appropriate amount and use of quotations? (Too much or too little can both be problems. Quotations should be chosen with an eye to how well they may provoke discussion or debate. Passages that are complex or contradictory, that raise questions for the reader or are puzzling, that use figurative language or relate to other significant passages are usually good choices. Moreover, quotations are not self-explanatory--they should be introduced and analyzed and related to the paper's main argument.)
• How well is the paper organized? Does the writer use the first paragraph to draw you into the argument or are you still unsure what it is after finishing the paper? Is the writer describing the specific focus of his or her argument and using active, precise verbs to clarify his or her goals in the paper? Does the body of the paper advance the argument, anticipate and forestall counterarguments, and marshall supporting evidence? Does each body paragraph have a clear relation to the main argument and the preceding and following paragraphs? Is it easy to understand why the body paragraphs come in the order they do? Are transitions between paragraphs smooth and effective? Does the conclusion go beyond summarizing or restating the main argument to commenting on it or suggesting what follows from it?

The remainder of the class period should be devoted to a dialogue between the partners. Authors should ask reviewers any questions they have about their essays; partners should consider any disagreements they have over how to apply the criteria for evaluation to be sure they understand the criteria well; and partners should exchange ideas and strategies for revision and improvement. Authors should leave the peer review session with their first draft and their reviewers comments on the form provided on Wednesday.

Over the weekend, authors should use the suggestions from the peer review they feel will help improve the paper and make sure that their revisions address the most significant problems or weaknesses the reviewer has identified (and others the reviewer may have missed). In essence, before turning in the final draft on Monday, September 30, authors should use the weekend to review their own essays and revisions in much the same way they reviewed their partner's essay. After they have completed their revisions, they should write (on a separate page) a reflection on the drafting and revision process that includes an assessment of the usefulness of your partner's comments and explains the revisions you made (and chose not to make).

Goals

The overarching goal of the peer review workshop is for you to give and receive substantive feedback on the critical essay, and, in so doing, learn more about how to write an effective persuasive/analytical essay. This should happen in several ways. First, by responding to a peer's essay by using the criteria for evaluation that I will be using when grading the critical essays, you should better understand those criteria and how to meet them. Your partner may do things in his or her paper that you didn't think of doing (good or bad); seeing how he or she attempts to meet the assignment's criteria for evaluation can shed light on your own essay's argument, use of evidence, organization, and sentence-level prose. Second, by receiving feedback on your own critical essay from your partner, you can learn several things about your paper in particular and the requirements and expectations of the assignment in general. On the one hand, you can find out how persuasive your partner found your main argument, listen to and consider questions your paper raises but doesn't answer to your partner's satisfaction, and hear suggestions for improving your paper. On the other hand, you can learn more about the criteria for evaluation and how to apply them yourself to your own paper over the weekend, as you revise your first draft.

In addition, I will be using the first draft and your response to your partner's comments as a gauge of how seriously you took the drafting and revision process when writing this critical essay. I will also be evaluating the effectiveness of your work as a reviewer by comparing your responses on the form to my own applications of the criteria of evaluation and suggestions for improvement, as well as taking into account your partner's response to your comments. Although these considerations will not affect your grade on the critical essay, they will play into your preparation/participation grade in the course.