Peer Responses

As your peers make progress on their own papers, you will offer advice about their content to help them (and you) continue to improve. On the day a revised draft is due, you will comment on paper of a classmate (and one will comment on yours). Arrange with your group how you will distribute the sharing evenly.

For full credit, follow these steps (times are guidelines, not requirements)

1. Share your paper with everyone in your group (2 mins)
2. Decide as a group who will comment on whose paper (2 mins)
3. Read the paper all the way through, multiple times (15 mins)
4. Make at least 5 comment boxes and fill each one with detailed suggestions for improvement: one comment for the beginning, three for the middle, and one for the ending (30 mins)

Your comments should be about ideas and logic, not grammar and style. As you read, ask yourself, "How can the writer help me see the meaning better? How can the writer improve connections in the paper?" Remember, the standard is effective communication, and that means strong connects within and between paragraphs. Embrace what Keith Hjortshoj tells us: "Effective writing, therefore, facilitates continuous reading from beginning to end" (115).