 |
 |
|
 |
|||||
|
|||||||
|
ENGl 111 English Composition |
|||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
Reader's Guide to Commenting on Peer Drafts Responding to Essays -- Three steps 1. Read the writer's note and the essay. Write a letter to the writer responding to their writer's note. Make sure your response is thoughtful and thorough. Try as hard as you can to be helpful to the writer. 2. Reader-Based Feedback. You need to be honest. Tell what's truely happening to you as you read. This kind of feedback tells as much about you as it does about the writer. A. Read the first paragraph. Stop at the end and tell your the writer what=s going on in your head at that particular moment. What are you reminded of? What do you expect to happen next? What=s the essay going to be about? Are you engaged? Bored? What detail facinates you? What detail seems irrelevant? What do you want to know more about? Roll the movie of your mind at the moment you stop reading. B. Read the second paragraph. Answer the same questions. C. Read to the middle of the essay. Answer the same questions. D. Read to the end of the essay. Tell how you feel now. Were you surprised by the direction the essay went? Is there still something you want to know more about? How do the beginning and the ending of the essay fit together? Do they ``match up with" what happened in the middle? What do you feel now? Why? 3. Criterion-Based Feedback. This kind of feedback is more traditional, more judgmental. You need to be very specific and descriptive in your responses here. A. Is the piece descriptive? Do you experience what=s there? Where is it the most descriptive? Where would you like more details? What kinds of details? B. Are the people in the essay real and interesting? What could be done to make them more real? C. Are there good ideas, insights in the essay? What are they? Where does the writer show the most understanding of the subject? Are the ideas supported with enough examples, evidence, details? Where would you like more supporting material? What kind of support would be most useful to you? D. Organization. How is the essay organized? What guides the writer=s movement from paragraph to paragraph? Could you follow it easily? Where did you get lost? E. Sense of the Writer. Is there a sense of engagement or commitment to the topic? An appropriate voice and stance toward the reader? Where is it most obvious? Other Options for Responding to Peer Writing You'll find more ideas for responding at the following site: http://www.gsh.org/wce/wrtguide5.htm You can also try these techiques: a. Read the title. Stop. What do you expect from a piece with this title? How does it establish and limit the subject? How does it set the voice or tone of the piece. b. Read the first paragraph. Stop. What in that first paragraph makes you want to read further? What do you expect to follow? Describe the essay you think would follow from this initial paragraph. c. Read the next 2 paragraphs. Are your expectations being fulfilled? Where do you feel lead astray? Where do you want more focus? What's working? Are you committed to the piece? Why or why not? d. Read to the end of the piece. Each group member should take a few minutes and write down what they feel the thesis statement of the essay is. When everyone has come up with a thesis, compare that to the author's thesis statement. Do your statements match up? What's different about them? What does that tell you about the piece? e. Does the essay remind you of any of the pieces we've read from our text so far this semester? Which ones? In what way? Suggest one technique that one of the authors from the text uses that the writer could incorporate into her or his essay. f. Tell the writer what you would do with this essay if it were your essay -- which it's not.
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
