“Peer Review” Focuses and Questions

Instructors evaluate essays essentially within the following four basic focuses of

1) Content, 2) Organization, 3) Mechanics (technical aspects), and 4) Style.

You, both as a reader and the writer, can give and get feedback within these domains. To this end, please consider and respond to the following questions as you read and consider another author’s writings, as well as using these to critique your own work.

Not all these questions that follow will apply to every piece of writing you consider. Try to “answer” as many questions as you can. Be specific as you include both praise and suggestions for revision, using the “sandwich” method of analysis (where praise is the “bread” and suggestions are the inner “works” of the sandwich).

I. Content:

1. What is the best point, illustration, or “moment” that the author creates in this

essay? Why does it appeal to you?

2. Which point or paragraph could use more detail, extending an example to help illustrate and enhance a point that the author is trying to make?

3. What is the writer’s main “purpose” in writing this piece? What audience do

you think that the writer is addressing?

II. Organization:

1. What organizational strategy seems to be at work in this piece?

a. simple chronological movement in time

b. chronological, with one or more “flashbacks” to alter the time sequence

c. “issue-driven” development (series of non-chronological ideas, often

arranged with points moving from least to most important)

2. Why does using this particular organizational strategy work well to “further”

the purpose of the writer and the work?

3. What alternative organizational strategy might also be successful?

4. How does the introductory paragraph “hook” the reader’s interest? How does the conclusion summarize and/or reinforce the thematic content of the essay? Could the ending benefit from a more physical gesture, more of a visual image to carry the reader both back to the heart of the essay, and/or into the future?

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Peer Review Focuses:

III. Mechanics (Punctuation, Spelling, Usage issues):

1. What issues of punctuation and usage do you see in this piece?

(What did YOU used to be guilty of, until someone showed you how to identify those issues in your own writing?)

2. What capitalization and spelling concerns do you have with this piece?

3. What “kudos” can you give for mechanics, or use of MLA format guidelines?

IV. Style:

1. What word, phrase, or sentence is the essay’s best example of effective “diction”?

a. vocabulary, word choices

b. syntax (word ordering in sentences)

2. Discuss the effectiveness of sentence “variety,” in terms of length and syntax.

3. Discuss any effective “transition” words or phrases that carry the reader

smoothly from one idea or paragraph to the next.

4. What aspects of the writer’s “written voice” could use more attention?

(Consider the effectiveness of word choices, syntax, sentence variety, transitions)