For each of the major assignments in this course, you will engage in a peer response process. These responses will provide you with feedback, allow you to see how some of your peers tackled the same assignment, and give you the opportunity to correct problems in your work before I grade it.

I will divide the class into peer response groups, each consisting of three or four people. When the assignment is due, you will exchange drafts with the members of your group, plus e-mail one to me. Then, before the next class, you will type a response to each of your peers’ drafts in which you address the following questions:

1. Examine the information your peer provides about his or her sources in the annotated bibliography, both in the bibliographic citation and the summary paragraphs. Do all of these appear to be valid sources? Are the summaries clear enough to convince you that your peer has a thorough understanding of all of them? Do any of the summaries seem similar enough to make you wonder why your peer would need both sources?

2. Consider the audience analysis section. How clearly does your peer define a specific audience? How well does your peer explain how he or she will need to shape his or her project to address that audience?

3.  How well does your peer define a research question and develop it over the course of the proposal? A well-defined research question is clear, specific, and compelling. It also is narrow enough that your peer can explore it in satisfactory depth. If the project seems too broad or too ambitious at this point, say so. Consider also the proposal’s coherence. In an effective proposal, the connections between the specific issues the proposal presents will be apparent. If you have trouble seeing how a specific issue your peer brings up fits into the overall topic, that suggests a problem.

4. Examine the specific issues your peer develops in the proposal — not the overall research question but the more detailed paragraphs that follow — and compare them to the relevance paragraphs in the annotated bibliography. How clear are the connections between the sources and the details of the proposal? Note that a source virtually never supports an entire project. The point of using sources is to help one make more specific supporting arguments. Think in terms of the scale of abstraction, as we have discussed. If your peer merely makes a connection between a source and the overall research question, that is a bad sign. Also, how distinct are the individual sources? Often at this stage, you will find that several sources address one aspect of a research question, while no sources at all address others. Pointing out that many sources address a single aspect of the question can help your peer eliminate repetition, while pointing out that no sources appear to be relevant to a particular aspect of the question can help your peer determine where he or she needs to do more research (or sometimes where a specific issue is not worth pursuing).

5. How well is the proposal organized? Organization is always crucial to an argument’s clarity, and paragraphing is obviously a key element of organization. Each paragraph should have a clear, easily identifiable focus, and the focus of each paragraph should be distinct. That means two paragraphs should not be making the same point. Also, the sequence of the paragraphs — which also means the order of the points your peer makes — should make sense to you. Look for anywhere the writer returns to a point he or she had brought up earlier. Those points may need to be combined, which will likely involve some cutting. Pay attention to paragraph length Paragraphs may vary somewhat in that regard, but only within limits. If a proposal is 985 words and one paragraph contains 445, that’s usually a problem. On the other hand, as I have warned, it is a bad sign when paragraphs get progressively shorter near the end. Do you see anywhere that a paragraph goes on too long and should be split, or where the paragraphs are too short and need to be either developed further or combined?

6. Identify any particular technical mistakes — these include grammar, spelling, format, and stylistic errors — that you notice, especially if the writer makes them repeatedly. Are any sentences difficult for you to understand, or did you have to re-read them several times because they were confusingly written? Identify them.

Be critical. The most common error people make on peer responses is pointing out too few problems because they are offering too much praise. When you are trying to make your writing better, pointed criticism is more helpful than pats on the back, and the latter tend to crowd out the former. Often, students fall into what I call the spoonful of sugar approach, in honor of the song from Mary Poppins: “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” The will say something like, “This is a really good proposal. I like the way you explain your points. I wish I had chosen such good quotations. I don’t see any problems with the organization. One thing, though, and maybe it is just me, so don’t feel too bad about it, but I can’t find anywhere you stated a research question.” Obviously, that is a major flaw, and that observation deserves to be foregrounded more. Also, the almost apologetic tone of the criticism undercuts its effectiveness.

The one time positive comments can be appropriate is when you point out something specific that works better than other portions of the assignment. For example, you might say, “Your most effective argument comes in paragraph four of your proposal, where you [explanation of what is particularly effective] because you [explanation of what makes it effective].” Your peer can then conceivably take that observation and use it to improve other parts of the assignment, which by implication are not as good as the one you praised. However, this approach is still usually less helpful than directly pointing out problems, so you may do this only once per response (and you do not need to do it at all).

Write your responses directly to your peers, not to me or a third party. Say, for example, “This source does not appear to be relevant to your topic,” not “This source does not appear to be relevant to her topic.” Keep your criticism focused on the writing rather than the writer: “What you say in your conclusion about [X] contradicts what you said in your introduction” is helpful; “You contradict yourself sometimes, so readers have trouble taking you seriously” is much less so.

Organization is key to peer responses. Follow the order of the questions. 

Paragraph your response. Dividing the response into multiple paragraphs (usually two or three) will help you in several ways: 1) it will help you focus on specific issues, rather than presenting your peer with something that seems just like a series of notes; 2) it will help prevent repetition; 3) it will even help you write at greater length because paragraphing encourages you to move down and up the scale of abstraction.

Do not respond to each question separately, and do not number your responses. For some drafts, you may have little to say about some of the questions. For example, if you see no problems with the paragraphing, fine — skip it, and don’t even bother saying, “I see no problems with the paragraphing.” Give your attention where it is needed.

You should not attempt to mark every single technical error in the draft. That is not your job. Not only is it time-consuming, it is not particularly helpful. You may make an occasional mark on a peer’s draft as a note to yourself or to help you identify where a problem occurs when you discuss it in your response — for example, “I’ve put an asterisk at the two places I think contradict each other.” But you should not attempt to go through your peers’ work correcting every problem.  If you see a particular problem repeatedly, simply note it once and say something like “You make this mistake a lot.” Your goal is to respond to the draft as a reader, not edit or correct it.

Title your peer responses in this way: Peer Response for [peer’s name]’s Annotated Bibliography, Audience Analysis, and Proposal

Will vary, but each response should be at least 350 words of your own writing, not including any quotations from your peer’s essay. Please put the word count with and without quotations at the bottom of each response. On the other hand, getting a 950-word response to a 1300-word draft you have written is overwhelming. If you find yourself going over 500 words, I suggest you prioritize your comments and cut; you can always bring up additional problems during the peer response session.

Bring two copies of each response with you to class, one for your peer and one for me.

Your peer responses will be judged on your thoughtfulness, the perceptiveness of your comments, and your organization and sense of priority; your complete set of responses will receive a single holistic grade (A+ to F). If a peer gives you an incomplete draft, you should still respond to the best of your ability, but of course I will not penalize you if you cannot meet the length requirement when responding to a short draft (within reason, of course — if your peer’s draft is 100 words short, you should still manage to come close to the requirement without much trouble).

Part of the benefit your peers receive comes from reading your work. Failing to provide a complete draft to your peers will result in a penalty of 10-50% to your peer response grade, depending on the degree of incompletion.

An important part of the peer response process is the discussion that occurs in class. Missing the class in which a peer response session takes place will result in a 30% penalty to your peer response grade. Arriving late for a peer response session is also unacceptable and will affect your participation score for the day.

As for your peer responses themselves, you must bring them with you on the appropriate days. Missing peer responses sent to your peers (and to me) later the same day will receive a 10% penalty; peer responses sent after that earn no credit at all. 

Penalties are cumulative.