Checking English mistakes

Essays and Papers: What is a Peer Review?

CSCI 3316 Fall 2017

1 Goals

This course is a “W” course. That means you will be learning about writing, editing, and rewriting, as well as about technology and ethics. Writing will help you learn the course content. Learning about both writing and ethics will happen when you read another student’s work. This handout describes what I expect you to do in your role as a peer-reviewer for another student’s paper.

Students will be organized into pairs for each assignment. You will receive your partner’s paper in the email the day the first draft is due. Please print it out so that you can write on the printed copy. As you read the paper, mark anything you find that can be improved. Following is a list of things to look for.

1. Unclear passages. This is probably the most important kind of help you can give your partner. Identify passages that are confusing and mark them with yellow highlighter. Do this when the sentence is tangled and you do not understand what the writer intended to say. Mark a sentence that you cannot follow because it has too many clauses or murky pronouns. Mark a sentence if you need to read it three times to understand it.

2. Wrong choice of words. Circle a word or phrase if you think the writer used the wrong word. Do so even if you are unsure. Circle a word if it does not belong in a professional communication. Write WW

3. Unsupported claims. In our field, it is very important to be able to support your claims and opinions. Write UC in the margin opposite an unsupported claim. Write BL if you believe the writer is using bad logic or that the conclusion does not follow from the evidence.

4. Hedges. A writer should not hedge his statements. For example, a sentence should not start with “I think that sometimes the answer is probably ... ”. Without the hedging, this sentence becomes: “Probably, ...”, or “Sometimes, ...”. Draw a line through any hedges that you find.

5. Conciseness. Good writing is concise. Every word in the sentence should contribute to the meaning. Pretend you have to pay a fee for each word you write – do not use three words where one will do the job. For example, “Due to the fact . . . ” should be replaced by ”Because. . . ” and “really unique” should be, simply “unique”. Draw a line through pads that you find. For example, this sentence contains two pads: “You should circle a word if you think the spelling is wrong.” Here it is without the padding: “ Circle a word if the spelling is wrong”.

6. Other kinds of errors. For these kinds of errors, circle the word or phrase and write an error code in the margin. I do not expect you to be expert at finding these errors. However, if you see something, say something.

• For incorrect spelling, write SP. • If the subject and verb do not agree, (plural/singular) write SVA for subject/verb agreement. • For a punctuation problem, write PN • If the paragraph should be split into two paragraphs, write PR near the split-point.

Essays and Papers: What is a Peer Review? CSCI 3316 Fall 2017 2

Finishing the review. Write a sentence or two about your general impressions of the paper. Say something you liked about the paper. Is it interesting? convincing? Did you learn something by reading it? Then state any criticisms. Is one part confusing? Does some part seem mixed up or wrong? How might the writer address that problem? Did the writer fail to supply evidence for a claim? Which one? What kind of evidence would help?