Peer Review Assignment
For this assignment, you will read two papers by other students in the class and offer your own comments on them. Your comments will be anonymous. The point of the exercise is
to let you see how different students approached the topics you were writing about,
to give you some additional feedback on your paper, which you may want to take into account in writing your next paper.
to give you practice asking the kinds of questions you should be asking about your own paper.
For each paper, you will be asked to answer the following questions.
What is this paper’s thesis, and how clearly is it expressed?
Were you persuaded by the author’s analysis? Why or why not?
Are there parts of the paper that could be omitted, or does every part contribute to the argument?
Are there parts of the paper you found confusing or hard to follow? If so, which, and how might they be made clearer?
Did grammatical errors or awkward phrasing ever impede your reading of this paper? If so, give some examples.
What part of the paper did you find most illuminating?
Do you have any other constructive advice for the author?
Mechanics
Starting on March 22, when you log in to the course page on http://turnitin.com and click the Peer Review tab, you should see the Peer Review assignment for the first paper. When you select this assignment, you should see two papers. Click the pencil beside each paper to review it. You will be able to see the entire text of the paper. Read the whole paper at least once before beginning. Then answer each question as it comes up by typing in the text box provided.
After you’re finished with each answer, click Submit to go on to the next question. Your answers will be stored in the website’s database, where they will be visible to the author of the paper and to the instructors; you need not turn in a hard copy for this assignment.
The deadline for completing the assignment is April 5.
Starting April 6, you will be able to read the Peer Reviews that have been submitted for your paper (in your class portfolio).