Alice Walker “Everyday Use”

 

Peer Review Questions

1. For full credit, please submit a five-page paper with a Works Cited page (page 6) for peer editing in the link above by Friday night. 

2. By Saturday night, choose one peer’s paper (if someone already has a review, please move on to someone with no reviews), and review the paper using the questions below. As you are responsible for one peer review, please respond to ALL the questions in a succinct yet thorough manner and submit them as a reply to the peer whose work you’re reviewing.

Peer review is helpful in several ways. First, it gives the writer a real audience, readers who can point to what pleases or puzzles them, who make suggestions, who may often disagree (with the writer or with each other), and who frequently, though not intentionally,  misread. Though writers don’t necessarily like everything they hear (they seldom hear “This is perfect. Don’t change a word!”), reading and discussing their work with others almost always gives them a fresh perspective on their work, and a fresh perspective may stimulate thoughtful revision. (Having your intentions  misread, because your writing isn’t clear enough, can be particularly stimulating.) The writer whose work is being reviewed is not the sole beneficiary. When students regularly serve as readers for each other, they become better readers of their own work and consequently better revisers. And, as you probably know, learning to write is in large measure learning to read.

Note: It’s not a bad idea for you to ask  yourself these questions before you give a draft to a fellow student.

Checklist for Peer Review: 

Read the draft once quickly. Then read it again and jot down brief responses to the following questions.

1. What is the essay’s topic? Is it one of the assigned topics or a variation of one of them? Is the title appropriate? Does the draft show promise of fulfilling the assignment?

2. Looking at the essay as a whole, what thesis (main idea) is stated or implied? If implied, try to state it in your own words.

3. Is the thesis plausible? How might it be strengthened?

4. Looking at each paragraph separately:

· What is the basic point?

· How does each paragraph relate to the essay’s main idea or to the previous paragraph?

· Should some paragraphs be deleted? be divided into two or more paragraphs? be combined? be put elsewhere? (If you outline the essay by jotting down the gist of each paragraph, you will get help in answering these questions.)

· Is each sentence clearly related to the sentence that precedes and to the sentence that follows?

· Is each paragraph adequately developed? Are there sufficient details to support the generalizations

5. Are the introductory and concluding paragraphs effective? Why/why not?

6. What are the paper’s chief strengths?

7. What are the paper’s weaknesses?

8. Make at least two specific suggestions that you think will assist the author to improve the paper.

Search entries or author

 

14.3 Developing a Thesis Statement

1. Once you’ve read the story or novel closely, look back over your notes for patterns of questions or ideas that interest you. Have most of your questions been about the characters, how they develop or change?

For example:  If you are reading Conrad’s  The Secret Agent, do you seem to be most interested in what the author has to say about society? Choose a pattern of ideas and express it in the form of a question and an answer such as the following:

Question: What does Conrad seem to be suggesting about early twentieth-century London society in his novel  The Secret Agent? Answer: Conrad suggests that all classes of society are corrupt.

Pitfalls:  Choosing too many ideas. Choosing an idea without any support.

2. Once you have some general points to focus on, write your possible ideas and answer the questions that they suggest.

For example:  Question: How does Conrad develop the idea that all classes of society are corrupt? Answer: He uses images of beasts and cannibalism whether he’s describing socialites, policemen or secret agents.

3. To write your thesis statement, all you have to do is turn the question and answer around. You’ve already given the answer, now just put it in a sentence (or a couple of sentences) so that the thesis of your paper is clear.

For example:  In his novel,  The Secret Agent, Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and their relationships to each other. This pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level of early twentieth-century London society.

4. Now that you’re familiar with the story or novel and have developed a thesis statement, you’re ready to choose the evidence you’ll use to support your thesis. There are a lot of good ways to do this, but all of them depend on a strong thesis for their direction.

For example:  Here’s a student’s thesis about Joseph Conrad’s  The Secret Agent.

In his novel,  The Secret Agent, Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and their relationships to each other. This pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level of early twentieth-century London society.