Point-Predict Peer Review
1) Find a partner. This partner should not be the same person you worked with on the last project.
2) Give your partner one of the paper copies of your draft. Keep the other copy for yourself.
3) Decide who goes first.
4) One peer will read the other's paper aloud, pausing every 2-3 sentences to summarize the main point and to predict what will come next. The peer whose paper is under review should take notes and ask questions.
Instructions for the reader.
- Read each sentence aloud. At the end of the sentence, ask yourself if this is the author's main point.
- If the sentence is not the main point, go on to the next sentence. If you think the sentence is a new main point, pause to summarize what that point is and what you predict will come next. At a minimum, you should pause to summarize and predict every 2-3 sentences. State what you think the author’s purpose is and how well the text is meeting that purpose.
- If your predictions do not match what is in the essay, stop to discuss with your peer why your expectations differed from what was written. Suggest changes that will help your peer match his content with your expectations.
- If you find a particular sentence confusing or difficult to read, pause to discuss the reasons for your confusion with your peer.
Instructions for the author.
- This is your paper. Make sure you get good feedback! If your partner’s prediction or summary does not match your intentions, do not let her go on until you understand the reasons for this discrepancy. Try to understand what cues in the text led to her expectations. Find out what you can do to clarify your main points.
- If you notice that your peer has difficulty with a particular sentence or concept, do not let her go on until you understand why the sentence caused confusion. Did you have an unclear pronoun reference? Did you use a wrong word? Is the subject of the sentence unclear?
- Don’t let your peer get away with vague evaluations of your work. Ask her questions until you understand what is missing from your paper and how you can address these omissions.
- Take lots of notes. Mark any place in your draft where your peer seems to stumble. These are areas that will need future revision.
After the peer review:
Go to the class web site (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~wolfe/e306/summer00) and click on my email address. Send an email to me explaining how you will use the feedback you just received to revise your paper. Be sure to send a copy of the email to yourself.
Sample Feedback Dialogue
Reader (reading first paragraph, a quotation defining “discourse community”): Is this the point of the text—the point of the paper? No, I think he’s just defining what a discourse community is. I don’t think the point has been brought out into the paper yet.
Text: Like any other interest group, the sport of crew has its own discourse community. Crew, usually identified as rowing, is the action of moving a vessel though the water by using bladed sticks called oars. Rowing used to be the only reliable source of propulsion for a boat, but today it is practiced for recreation and has become a highly competitive intercollegiate sport.
Reader: Do I think this is the point? No, not really, I think he is defining what crew is as a sport.
Text: Crew is a sport that is catching on, but is still not practiced by all colleges and high schools. Being lucky to attend an institution that promoted crew as a means for physical exercise, I got an early start in the sport. Most rowers don’t being rowing until their college years. It is a sport unlike any other sport because you are confined to a sixty-foot shell with a width of twenty-four inches and you have to be in perfect synchronicity with 7 other teach members. Any mistake will not only reduce speed, but throw off balance and precise swinging motion.
Reader: I think here he has still not brought his point out clearly, but he’s getting locked up in what crew is, and his experience—and not so much the language used in crew.
Text: Most rowers are usually tall and have somewhat short hair.
Reader: Um, I don’t think this has anything to do with it either. I think he’s—he’s going off on all these tangents all of a sudden.
Text: It is a psych factor for the teammates because it not only categorizes them as a group, but makes them look mean by increasing their height and the width of their backs.
Reader: I think….he’s got some key words here he needs to define.
Writer (interrupting): Such as what?
Reader: Well like just bring out what you mean—some could be taken in a couple of meanings.
Writer: What are you talking about? Which ones?
Reader: Like—don’t worry about it.
Writer: No, you have to say the words, so I know which ones.
Reader: Like—like psych factor—I think you should go back and try and find something else there.
Text: Rowers tend to have long arms with big hands full of calluses on the inside of their palm and heavy shoulders with a lean upper body.
Reader: I think what’s happening here is he’s going off on this tangent of describing what everybody looks like—and not so much of the language—I think he should go….into more detail on their language.
Sitko, Barbara. “Exploring Feedback: Writers Meet Readers.” Hearing ourselves think: cognitive research in the college writing classroom. Eds. Ann M Penrose and Barbara M. Sitko. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993. 170-187.