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Writing Peers

-A writing peer is someone else in the class who you feel is on the same page as you, so to speak. This should be someone whose judgment you trust. You should feel comfortable sharing work with this person and receiving advice from him/her.

-You may not even know this person as class begins. This doesn’t matter. As the semester goes by you should get to know this person and his/her writing very well, as you will be working together often.

-Revising and editing are crucial to any work of art. And, in this course, you will receive a grade for all of the time you spend revising in class. To receive full credit for a revision day, you need to do the following:

1) Spend all of your time in class reading, writing, and revising work. 2) You need to read at least one piece by your writing peer, and have a discussion about the piece. 3) You need to follow this revision order: a) writer says what the piece is, and what he or she intended b) reviser reads the work c) reviser responds directly to the comments and intentions provided by the writer d) big-picture issues are discussed e) work is re-read by the reader; little-picture issues are marked f) little-picture issues are discussed 4) This discussion must be recorded in the blank writing boxes I provide you. 5) You need to consult at least one on-line revision web-site on Moodle. You must record which web-site you consulted for revision help.

//**Big-Picture Issues:**//

1) What is the work’s central idea?

2) Can you sum-up what the work is about in one sentence?

3) What is the work trying to accomplish? What is the writer’s intention?

4) Does the work accomplish the writer’s intention?

5) How does the work accomplish the writer’s intention? What suggestions can be made to help the writer better achieve this?

6) How is the work organized? Is the organization logical?

7) After reading one part of the work, can you predict where the work is going next? Discuss if this is good or bad for this piece.

8) Which places could benefit from more (or less) specific details and examples?

9) Is the work clear? Where is the work most clear? Where is it the least clear? Discuss if this is good or bad, and make suggestions for more or less directness or clarity in specific places.

10) What change is the writer trying to make with this (in the reader, in the writer, in the world)? In other words, why did the writer decide to write this piece, at this point in time, in this way?

11) What literary elements or rhetorical devices is the writer using well?

12) Is this the right genre for this piece?

13) Is the assignment dealt with appropriately?

//**Little-Picture Issues:**//

1) Spelling Errors

2) Punctuation Errors

3) Missing Words

4) Incorrect Word Choices

5) Incorrect Word Forms