English Composition 1
Peer Critiques of Essays
For essay assignments in this class, we will have "peer critiques." In other words, you will read, study, and offer constructive comments on the essays written by other members of the class. These critiques are important for two reasons:
- The peer critiques help the writer identify the strengths of his or her essay and the ways that the essay could be more effective, helping the writer through the revision process; and
- The peer critiques demonstrate how well members of the class can read an essay critically and how well they understand the principles of effective writing.
Occasionally, students merely flatter the writer: "This is a good draft," "You have a good introduction," "You use good words," You have a good conclusion," "Good luck revising!" Well, with these kinds of comments, the writer will need plenty of luck during the revision process. The comments are "nice," but they are not critical comments, and they offer the writer no specific suggestions for revising. Just so you know, the dictionary definition of "critical" is "characterized by careful, exact evaluation and judgment." "Good introduction" does not indicate "careful, exact evaluation and judgment."
You may feel a little uneasy at first as you start offering constructive comments to other students, maybe feeling as if you might offend the writer by suggesting ways that the writer's essay could be stronger. Believe me, members of the class do not want simple flattery--they want specific comments about their essays that will help them improve the essays. I usually do not have students complain about constructive criticism they receive from other students during peer critiques, but I have had students complain when they receive nothing but flattery on their essays and do not receive critical comments from other class members.
Of course, if you notice something that the writer is doing well, you definitely should point that out. However, you should also offer specific suggestions that can help the writer make the essay even stronger. For example, you could tell the writer that you do not see how the information in the first half of paragraph two is relevant. You could suggest that a specific sentence that contains abstract and general language could be rewritten with more specific images. Or you might tell the writer that the first sentence of paragraph three is difficult for you to understand, or you might say that you would like to see a specific idea in the essay developed, described, or explained in more depth. It's important that you offer these kinds of comments to the writer. Your specific and constructive comments should give the writer a clear sense of the specific changes that might be made to the essay as the writer revises.
It's also important to be nice as you write your critiques. No one likes to hear, as one student on campus did recently, that another student thinks her essay is "dull and boring." If you think an essay is dull and boring, there are better ways to convey this idea to the writer. Try as best you can to change "negative" comments into constructive comments involving specific suggestions. For example, "I think your paper is dull and boring" could be changed to "I think your paper would be more interesting if you included more details, especially in the first two paragraphs." The message is really the same, but now the student is offering not only constructive comments but is indicating specific parts of the paper that could be stronger and a specific way in which they could be stronger. Be honest with your comments, but be specific and constructive with them as well.
During peer critiques, you also should not spend much time on errors and other "sentence-level" aspects of the essay you are critiquing. Of course, if you think errors or stylistic weaknesses are a substantial problem for the student, you should indicate this in your comments, but I find that students, in getting out their microscopes to view the details of a draft, often fail to see the big picture.
I remember well one essay we were critiquing in class recently. I read the essay with the class, and I thought, "Wow, this whole essay needs to be re-organized. I can't tell what the main point of the essay is, and I can't see how one paragraph is logically leading to the next paragraph. While the student could probably use parts of this essay in a revised draft, this draft will need extensive revision." Those were my thoughts. After students wrote their comments on the paper, I asked for a volunteer to share with the class one suggestion for the writer. A student raised his hand and said, "there is a misspelled word on the top of page two." "Well, yes," I began, taken aback by this comment. The misspelled word certainly was there, but so were more important things that the student should have noticed. It's usually much easier to see a misspelled word that to see the "big picture," but focusing on a few specific and sometimes obvious errors often does not help the writer much and does not require much thought from the person doing the critiquing.
You need to consider all aspects of an essay when you critique it, including the thesis, organization, support and development of ideas, clarity, style, and mechanics.
Eliminating errors from your writing is important. IVCC's Grading Standards for Student Essays clearly indicate that "A," "B," and "C" essays should contain almost no serious errors. However, as you revise or critique an essay, you should begin with the "larger" aspects of the essay (such as organization, development of ideas, and thesis) and move toward the "smaller" aspects (such as word choice and the elimination of errors). Again, though, if you recognize that the writer is having significance problems with errors or stylistic weaknesses in an essay, you should let the writer know, but try to focus your comments on the larger aspects of the essay, making specific suggestions for ways that the essay might be stronger.
While you should make specific suggestions, be careful not to rewrite any sentences for the student whose essay you are critiquing. You could write that a particular sentence is unclear to you and that you think the sentence would be clearer if it were reworded with more specific language and if the sentence were divided into two shorter sentences. However, if you rewrite the sentence for the student or even suggest specific phrases that the student might use, and the writer then uses your suggestions without quoting you and citing you as a source in the essay, then the essay may include plagiarism.
Peer critiques are graded. When I grade peer critiques, I usually do not have in mind specific comments that I think students should make about a particular essay (although I sometimes hope that students will notice and comment on something specific in the essay that I think is important). Instead, I ask myself how helpful the critique might be to the writer and base the grade on that. In general, it usually takes 30 to 40 minutes to write a good critique of an essay.