First, print out a hard copy of this page. In the "Student Web Sites" link of our class web site, find the rough draft research proposal of another student in class (see daily schedule for pairings.Post your written answers to the steps below as a link on your Assignment Index under section II A (linked to the words "On a proposal draft"), AND send a message to your partner informing him or her that the peer review is online, and including the URL for your peer review of that person's proposal draft. Do not write your answers on this sheet of paper; instead, just open Netscape, then File, then New, then Blank Page, and start typing.

Remember that you will be graded on the peer critiques that you write this semester, and the grade will be based on the sincerity of your efforts to really help the writer whose work you are assessing. Your goal here is, of course, to help a classmate learn to write better and achieve a better grade.  In addition, going through these steps should also cause you to reflect on how to improve your own proposal. Do as much of this peer review assignment as you can in class today. The deadline for 1) posting your review as a link to your ai.html and 2) for sending the e-message to a classmate is tonight at 7 p.m. The deadline for posting the final draft of your own proposal (a revision of the first posted draft) is Friday at 5 p.m.
 

Step One: Summarize the Assignment

Begin by going back to the original assignment—it’s on our web site, of course, or you can use your hard copy of it—and write a two or three sentence summary of what you believe to be the main purposes and goals of this assignment.

Step Two: Summarize Your Peer's Text

Next write a concise, two or three sentence summary of your peer's proposal.

Step Three: Compare the Assignment to Your Peer's Text

Once you have completed Steps One and Two, write a one-paragraph (about four or five sentence) summary of how well your peer's text meets the main purposes and goals of the assignment.  If anything seems short or lacking, point this out; if anything seems especially, particularly well done, point that out too.

Step Four: Review Grammar

Isolate and review each sentence of your peer's text (perhaps by highlighting it) to see if it is grammatically accurate, direct, succinct, and otherwise well written. As you may have heard, it works best to do this by going backwards through the text, sentence by sentence, so that the meaning of the paragraphs doesn’t cause you to glide over less-than-perfect sentences. Cut and paste into your peer review some sentences that you feel could be better; rewrite each sentence below it as a new and improved version. Have at least two of these pairs, and for each original/revised sentence pair, provide an explanation below it for the revision.

Step Six: Publish It

Edit and proofread what you've just written. Add a "back to assignment index" link to the upper right corner. Publish it, and then add a link to it to the appropriate line of your assignment index. Then send the e-mail message described above to your partner.
 

The last step: remember to practice what you preach in your own writing ! Again, writing these peer reviews should help you with your own writing as well; try to remember the advice that you just gave, and use it when you work on your own writing.