Place Direct Quotes Inside Peer Review

Instructions (repeat for each subsequent letter):

Find and download from iLearn one of your peers’ drafts. Read it, first with no pen in hand. Simply read straight through from start to finish. Next, jot down some notes about your first impression, maybe recalling a word or phrase or image that stuck out to you, and attempting to explain what, in your mind, seems to be the purpose (the main gist, if you will) of this piece of writing. What is it trying to do? Recording your initial reactions to the piece will allow you to check them against whatever you take away from the second, more careful read. A reader’s first impressions should be of vital interest to anyone seeking to strengthen their writing skills.

Read the piece again, this time critically — and with a pen. Use the Critical Reading Checklist to help you think about / call attention to specific parts of the peer’s essay. Make notes on the essay as you read, being sure to write down any questions you have and underlining words or phrases you want to praise and / or discuss in detail. Instead of merely proofreading your peer’s work, you will write your comments in the form of a letter. When you write the letter, you will use these annotations to be very specific as you enumerate and explain the essay’s greatest strengths and weaknesses (or, to put it less negatively, those areas that present the greatest opportunity for revision). You are welcome and indeed encouraged to borrow language from the University Writing Program Grading Rubric; a few aptly-chosen, specific phrases from any of these descriptions will go a long way in articulating your thoughts. Just be sure to place direct quotes inside quotation marks, and not to let your message be overrun by quoted material. That said, you are not assigning a grade to your group member’s essay, and should therefore avoid any such discussion; focus on the content and the form — and if you have sound ideas about how to improve certain parts of the essay, please include them as suggestions, not commands.

Your letter will follow the format of the Example Critique Letter (handed out in class and available under Course Materials). Essentially, you will thank the writer for sharing their work, you will summarize their essay in your own words, and you will attempt answers to the questions What’s this piece of writing trying to do? Does it do it well? and Is it worth doing? Lead with the positive. Is their title catchy? Do they use a particular word in their first sentence that has made you want to read more? Be specific and explain why. Your multiple positive comments and constructive critiques are meant to help the work more effectively achieve whatever its writer / your peer was going for.

Here is philosopher Hannah Arendt on the meaning of “reaction.”

“Since action acts upon beings who are capable of their own actions, reaction, apart from being a response, is always a new action that strikes out on its own and affects others. Thus action and reaction among men never move in a closed circle and can never be reliably confined to two partners. This boundlessness is characteristic not of political action alone. […] The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”