English 3001: Peer Review of Research Proposals
First, print out a hard copy of this page. In the "Student Web Sites" link of our class web site, find the research proposal of another student in class. 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 it to the person as the text of an e-mail message. Do not write your answers on this sheet of paper.
If your name appears in the second half of our class list, find a proposal draft written by someone in the second half of list; if your name appears in the first half of our class list, find one written by someone in the first half. (This last requirement will prevent too many messages going to just one or two people.) 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 doing all of this is Monday at noon; the deadline for posting the final draft of your own proposal (a revision of the first posted draft) is Tuesday at 10 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 its main purposes and goals.
Step Two: Summarize Your Peer's Text
Next write a two or three sentence summary of your peer's text.
Step Three: Compare the Assignment to Your Peer's Text
Once you have completed Steps One and Two, write a one-paragraph (about half of one double-spaced page) summary of how well your peer's text meets the main purposes and goals of the assignment.
Step Four: Review Grammar
Isolate and review each sentence of your peer's text to see if it is grammatically accurate, direct, succinct, and otherwise well written (as you may have heard, it is 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). Write down some sentences that you feel do not meet these criteria; rewrite the sentence as a potentially new and improved version. Have at least two of these pairs, and for each original/revised sentence pair, provide an explanation for the revision. (Finally, remember that you should practice in your own writing what you preach! Use the advice that you just gave when you work on your own writing.)
Step Five: Put It All Together
You now have enough material to produce two, one-half page paragraphs: one on how well your peer has met the goals and purposes of the assignment; and one on issues of style, grammar, mechanics, and structure. Now you must decide how you will organize this material into two helpful paragraphs. Consider carefully your audience, and what you feel are the most important issues. What do you want to emphasize? How can you help the writer understand what you feel is important, without feeling insulted? Do you want to include only negative comments, that is, things that can be fixed, or should you also note that some things were done well? Write these two paragraphs, and send one copy as an e-mail message to the proposal writer (either in the text of a message or as an attachment), and post another version to your Assignment Index. NOTE THEN, that your final copy of your peer review will consist only of two long paragraphs; what you wrote for Steps One through Four constitutes notes for what you write for Step Five, this step.