Peer Response

For Wednesday, you will need to read a sample essay (posted on Blackboard) and do a practice peer review.  The essay does not have a cover letter, so you can skip reading that.  What you do need to do, as per the instruction handout, follows:

1. Read through the entire essay once, 
1. highlighting sentences or paragraphs in yellow (or writing a squiggly line beneath them if you are reading a hard copy) that you found confusing in any way and 
2. highlighting in blue (or underlining with a straight line) any sentences or paragraphs that you think are really good.
2. Without looking back at the cover letter, summarize what you understood to be the essay’s main point and supporting reasons (try to do this without speculating about what you think the main point was supposed to be).
3. Go back over the essay and comment in the margin where you find each of the criteria from the “What I am looking for” section of the relevant assignment sheet.
4. At the end of the essay, note any elements you found missing.
5. Comment on any major problems you see with the essay, focusing on giving suggestions for what might make the essay more successful. 
6. Write a cover letter to the author in which you describe your experience reading the essay, starting by noting the things you think are working well, preferably by stating “I like the way the essay….” Give your assessment of how well the current essay meets the expectations of the assignment and how it is appropriate for the writing situation; note how well the essay has included the elements I will be looking for and which, if any, seem to be missing or inadequate; and discuss any other major problems you think are important and for which you can give suggestions. Make sure to take your audience, and her or his feelings, into consideration as you make choices about how you write your peer response; try to write the way you hope those who respond to your writing will write to you (or would want if you were a particularly sensitive person—just in case anyone likes blunt feedback).

Also keep the following from the assignment about what I will be looking for in essays in mind:

• An engaging introduction that introduces a problem relevant to a writing construct and suggests something new that your paper will say about it.

• A synthesis (grouping individual authors by their similarities and summarizing their common perspectives in relation to other groups) of what writing studies scholars have said about this problem/issue in the past.

• An indication of a problem, issue, gap, or need in the conversation that provides a niche for you to add something different.

• A well supported, but nuanced, argument that makes an original claim about the issue, states reasons that should appeal to readers of Young Scholars in Writing, and supported with evidence commonly accepted as valid by writing scholars.

• Fair and thorough discussion of alternative views and possible objections to your claim.

• Discussion of the implications of your conclusions for the larger ecology

• An organizational structure that connects the disparate parts of your paper together in a way that adds to the persuasiveness of your argument

• Language appropriate to the writing ecology including incorporation of the various writing studies terms we become familiar with in the course

• Appropriate citation of all source material and a complete list of all sources.

The author of this essay is unknown.  You may want to make up a name when you write out your cover letter.  Remember that the author is responsible for editing and formatting.  Please do not correct either of these.  I recommend that you give no more than three recommendations for changing the essay and that you keep your comments moderate--don't let them take over.  You may also want to identity the parts of the essay--introduction, summary of the conversation, synthesis of the conversation, statement of argument or niche, and conclusion--along with intended audience.

If you have any questions or problems, please let me know.