Guidelines for Peer Review

Peer review is essential to our improvement together as writers. Here are the steps you should follow when doing a review of your peers' work.

1. Get your own writing ready for review by others. Read your own writing aloud to see if it makes sense and is easy to read. This is the most important way to revise your own work.

1. Learn from the strengths of others’ papers. Reading others’ work can help you learn how your own could be improved.
2. Point out what's good in your peers' writing.  Follow the “sandwich” method of giving feedback. Say something positive both at the beginning and end of your review, so that people will better receive your suggestions for improvement. This is a way to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15)

• Help your peers know whether they have met the requirements for the assignment. Consider whether they answered all the questions that were asked in the assignment.

1. Ask clarifying questions and suggest ways to improve, graciously.

• Turn critical feedback into constructive feedback by using "I" statements with suggestions. For example, instead of saying, "This is confusing", say "I couldn’t understand this; can you explain more clearly?" (See University of Minnesota video.)
  
  
• Consider asking questions, so your peers can improve their submissions. Quote a particular section, or reference a page (like p. 3), and ask them, “What was the purpose of this section?”
  
  
• Checking grammar and spelling is not the focus of your review. Those types of critiques can be discouraging if those are all people receive. You should mainly call attention to these if issues with grammar and spelling make it difficult to understand the author’s meaning.
  
  
• Let your peers know about ways they could improve the style of their writing to make their points more effectively. This could be through better word choice, more sentence variety, or 

1. If there is a rubric in the course, you might want to review how the rubric would be applied to your peer’s document. You do not need to fully apply the rubric, but you can use it as a guide to come up with suggestions. For example, you might say, “Based on the grading rubric for this assignment, the sections that you might focus on improving the most are…”
2. If there is no specific rubric, consider the following questions:

• • Form:
    • Is the way the paper is written suitable for what it intends to say?

• Topic: 

• • Is there a clear thesis? (The statement that the paper intends to prove)
  • Is the thesis backed up by well-organized supporting evidence?
• Audience:
  • Does the paper address its audience effectively - in a way that is professional and yet winsome?
  • Does the paper have the proper tone (use of language) for its audience?
• Purpose:
  • Does the paper accomplish what it sets out to do?
  • When a prompt has been given, does the paper answer the prompt's question adequately?

1. Try not to take the feedback you receive personally. Peers’ feedback may not always be correct. If you are ever unsure, ask your instructor. This is especially important when you are thinking about edits to make for a future submission of the same document.