Overview
MAKE ORGANIZED NOTES AND COMMENT ON SPECIFIC SENTENCES OF THE PAPER.
Instructions for written peer review:
In class you will receive a paper copy of another student’s draft. You will be writing on their draft as well as attaching additional comments. These comments can be typed or handwritten, and a copy of the comments will be uploaded to this assignment.
Write your name on the draft you are about to review, and if you need to attach any additional paper, write your name on that too. Go through each of the following steps for each draft, and when you are finished share your comments with the author and be available to clarify anything you wrote.
If the paper has a thesis, rewrite the thesis in your own words.
Could you believe this, if you were given the right evidence? If so, the thesis is supportable.
Now write the opposite of the thesis. Could you believe this? If so, the thesis is debatable.
Now evaluate how rich or thoughtful the thesis is. Does it make you want to read a long paper? (If you feel that you know what the author will say without reading the whole paper, the thesis is probably not rich enough.)
If the paper has no thesis yet, write down at least three possible theses the paper could have.
Throughout the paper, flag anything that you don’t understand. The author should be explaining their sources so that you can understand them without having to read them yourself.
Throughout the paper, flag anything that you disagree with. If the author is making a controversial claim, they should be arguing for it, or explaining why they won’t argue for it (for example, because they want to assume it is true for the purposes of their paper).
The goal here is not that any reader would agree with everything in the end, the goal is that the author realizes when they need to provide argument or explanation.
At the end of reading the paper, write down any questions the paper has brought up for you. These will be possible things the author can explore as they expand their draft. What things should be discussed that the author hasn’t talked about yet?
If there was a thesis, what types of things should the author say in order to convince you that the thesis is true?