Peer Review

There are several ways to successfully use peer review in class to help your students become better writers. The first step is to remember that students must learn about and practice peer review as they would any other skill. Below are guidelines that you can copy, handout, and discuss with students prior to having them review papers in class. In addition, you should provide a worksheet for each paper assignment that clarifies what you want the students to address. See sample paper worksheets: critique paper, argumentative essay.

Peer Review Writing Workshop Guidelines

How to Help Other Writers Revise

Successful writers revise their writing more than inexperienced ones. Students of writing often confuse revising with proofreading. Put simply, revising is the first and most significant step to improve how you convey your ideas. Revising addresses organization, content, and style. Proofreading is a second and necessary step to making the paper conform to accepted and understood language conventions. Proofreading addresses syntax: grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

When giving feedback to other writers in class, your main focus as a peer reviewer should be on revision. So you should discuss issues of organization, content, and style before looking at syntax.

Steps in a Peer Review Workshop

1. Your group (ideally of 3 members) should focus on one paper at a time together.
2. The writer should begin by explaining briefly what he/she is trying to do in the paper and what he/she wants help with.
3. Next the writer should read the paper aloud. Reviewers should listen to get an overall sense of the paper and can take notes on what they think works and what doesn’t.
4. Discuss your impressions with the writer. Begin with what he/she does well. Open ended questions such as “What did you mean by that” are generally more useful and less threatening than directives such as “You should change this in this way.” You can lead the writer toward coming up with his/her own solution. Examples of some broad questions to consider:
   1. Does the paper satisfy the requirements of the assignment?
   2. Is there a topic sentence that introduces each paragraph, and do the sentences within the paragraph support the topic sentence?
   3. Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical order?
   4. Are the introduction and conclusion clear, do they connect to each other, and do they reflect the main point of the paper?
   5. Does the writer take a particular approach, have a unique style, or have an insightful analysis which makes the paper stronger? Should it be developed further?
5. The reviewers should then be given a copy and should read the paper to themselves.
   1. Work together on proofreading. If you see something “doesn’t look right” or “doesn’t sound right” but you aren’t sure what the problem is, discuss it with the other students and find the rule in Hacker.
   2. Look for patterns of error. For example, note if the writer has several instances of using comma splices. Point out no more than 2-3 kinds of error; most people aren’t able to learn by looking at more than 3 in one sitting.
   3. Go over questions that your professor has given you and fill out peer review sheets if assigned. Give them to the writer when you’re finished.

Please remember: You are working to make each other better writers, not simply trying to make the papers better.

By Gayla Mills