Please spend 30 minutes reviewing your classmate's paper according to the following guidelines. If you finish early, do not stop editing. Take the extra time to go back over your comments and make sure they are clear. This may require you to add more comments and add emphasis to comments you have already made.
First, read through the paper once without writing anything down. Then, read through it again making some comments in the margins. After this, address the questions below.
Topic -- What is the problem your classmate has approached in this paper? Are there clear points of disagreement between different groups considering this problem? If not, how might your classmate make such disagreements clearer to readers?
Organization -- How has your classmate organized this paper? Write a brief outline of your classmate's paper. Do you recommend any rearrangements of the different parts? Mention also anything your classmate can do to make the paper's organizational structure clearer to readers. Make a note in the margins for any place where you got lost while reading the paper.
Evidence -- Has your classmate made effective use of the chosen articles to support his or her point? Within each paragraph, consider how your classmate has documented various claims with evidence either paraphrased or quoted from the articles in question. Would you be able to track down the source if you wanted to? If you have any doubts about whether the source really said what your classmate claims it said, make a note of it in the margins.
Focus -- Consider the degree to which your classmate has focused on the issue in question. Are the points in the paper on which your classmate could expand? Or, are there parts of the paper that seem to wander too far beyond the topic in question? Make a note of areas in which the paper needs to expand or restrict itself more closely to the topic in question.
Alternatives -- Finally, consider possible counter arguments to your classmate's overall paper. Your classmate has at some point indicated which of the three sources he or she finds the most persuasive. Consider the argument you would make for one of the other three sources if you disagreed with your classmate. (Whether you agree with your classmate or not, briefly make a case for some alternative to your classmate's overall thesis.)
Please offer your classmates' papers the same consideration that you would like your own paper to receive. You will need to turn in peer-reviewed working drafts with the final drafts of your papers next week, and I will grade the comments you give your classmates in this exercise.