Syllabus

Schedule

Assignments

Supplementary Information

Peer Editing Guidelines for Paper Assignment Two
Literary Analysis

Please spend 40 minutes reviewing your classmate's paper according to the following guidelines. Write comments on the back of the last page of your classmate's draft and also in the margins of the your classmate's draft. 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. After writing responses to each of these topics, discuss peer-editing comments with your classmate.

1. Approach—Does this paper satisfy the demands of the assignment? Does the paper tell you anything about the work in question that you had not considered before?

2. Thesis—Write the paper's thesis statement. Is it arguable? Could someone else reasonably argue for a conflicting thesis statement? What could your classmate do to make it a more attention-grabbing thesis statement?

3. Writing Style—Indicate any unclear sentences or any particularly effective sentences. Watch out for uses of passive voice or excessively wordy sentences. Overall, what are the strengths and weaknesses of this paper's writing style? Are the sentences too complicated and hard to follow, or are they too simple and slow-paced, or do they strike a good balance between these two tendencies?

4. Organization—Provide a brief outline of your classmate's paper. If there is anything about the paper's organization that is unclear, explain to your classmate how she or he can make it clearer. Examine the transitions the writer makes from one paragraph to the next and from one point to another. Indicate particularly effective transitions between ideas as well as those that could use improvement.

5. Evidence—Pay careful attention to your classmate's use of evidence to support the argument about the poem. Indicate any statements that are missing necessary support from a quotation. Also, indicate any quotation that does not receive enough analysis to make its inclusion in the argument worthwhile. In most cases, a quotation needs to be followed by an explication--an explanation of what the quotation says and how it supports the overall argument of the paragraph. Indicate any quotation that requires further explication. Each paper should include a Works Cited list at the end and page numbers for any quotation or paraphrase included in the body of the paper.

6. Opening and Closing Paragraphs—After reading the opening paragraph, explain what compels you to read the paper further. If nothing compels you to do so, suggest ways to change this paragraph to make it more engaging. The closing paragraph should conclude something as a result of the argument. What does this paper's closing paragraph conclude? How might the writer make this conclusion clearer?

7. Questions? Write three questions you have about the paper that will help your classmate develop the argument further.

8. Sign your classmate's draft after you have peer-edited it.

Please turn in one peer-edited draft of your paper along with the final draft. When I grade the final draft, I expect some revisions in response to peer-editing comments, though it is ultimately up to the student to decide which advice from the peer editor to follow. Remember also that the final draft should be at least six (6) pages long. I will look over peer-editing comments and give your peer-editor credit for them as part of the class participation grade.