Simon Fraser University

• Big Idea
• Schedule
• Knowledge Forum

Peer review is one important way in which writers are enabled to produce their best work. To ensure that each of you have the best chance possible of producing a great paper, I will not only read and evaluate each of your drafts, but ask you to review one other student's draft as well. Your review will be graded based on how complete and helpful it is.

Your Assignment

You will prepare a brief review of a peer's draft submissions for the “tradition” paper. It should be constructive. Rather than simply identifying areas for improvement, you should do your best to offer advice on how the improvements might be made. Your review should each be no more than two pages long, single spaced. If you like, you can also insert comments directly in your peer's paper, but this alone will not satisfy the assignment. Mark-ups are useful in some ways, but in my experience do not do the whole job of providing useful advice on how to revise.

Below are a few questions to help guide your thinking as you read your peer's work. These are not offered as a checklist -- you do not need to write your review around them. Also, if other questions or better questions occur to you, by all means ask them!

Guidelines

Before reading your peer's paper, review the description of the paper and the review criteria on the course web site. Your goal is to help your peer produce the best submission possible. After reading the paper, ask yourself:

• What are the strongest aspects of the paper as it stands? When the paper is revised, what do you want to make sure is not taken out or changed?
• Does the paper respond fully to the assignment as stated (the list of questions)?
  Are there specific gaps you could help the authors address? Explain these as best you can.
• Is the prose clear and easy to follow? Are there particular places where the author “loses” you? How might the language be made clearer?
• Does the paper hang together well? Did you find any transitions between paragraphs or sections difficult to follow?
• Are the various parts of the paper in proportion? For instance, are some sections longer or more detailed than you think they need to be to serve their intended purpose? Are some so short that they are not contributing in a clear way to the overall purpose of the paper?
• Does the paper draw appropriately from our readings and discussion in the course to strengthen the ideas it presents (e.g. to clarify the meaning of the terms used, to explain sources of inspiration, to provide examples of ideas that have “worked” or not)?
• Can you think of any other specific ways to enhance the paper (for instance, by re-arranging sections or paragraphs, adding diagrams or sketches, etc.)?

Grading

Your peer reviews will be graded according to the following rubric.