Peer Editing Sheet - Essay Two: Analyzing a Narrative

Brian Thill

Peer editing is valuable for several reasons. Your writing and thinking about this assignment will benefit from a thoughtful, candid assessment of your work by your peers at the drafting stage, and your writing and thinking will also benefit from the act of reading the works of others and seeing how and why they approach the same analytical task you are approaching in your own work. Lastly, good writing requires good rewriting, and the more practice you get with treating critical writing as an ongoing process and not just the creation of an end product, the stronger your work will be, in this assignment and in future assignments.

This peer editing sheet should take 30-40 minutes to complete.  Remember that it is important to get feedback to the other person promptly and well before the final draft is due so that the writer can use your comments in the revision process. Overly general or perfunctory comments in peer editing will lower your class participation writing grade.

1. Read through the entire essay. Mark the thesis statement and the central arguable claims of the essay as you read.

2. Does the essay address the first critical questions in the prompt: What do I make of this story? What is it really about? What is its “deeper meaning”?

3. Which clues, questions, or elements of the narrative of Abraham and Isaac does this essay scrutinize?

4. Does the essay develop arguments about what the narrative implies, suggests, or omits? Does the essay explore how and why those elements help us understand the “deeper meaning” of the narrative? Explain with specific references from the essay.

5. The prompt invites us to ask critical questions of this story in an effort to understand the deeper meanings and implicit arguments of the narrative. Does the essay make those questions explicit? How does this help or hinder the development of the ideas in the essay?

6. How does the essay make use of quotations: too much, too little, with limited relevance, with unclear explanations? Assess how the essay’s particular use of quotations helps or hinders the development of its central arguments.

7. Are the topic sentences, thesis, transitions, and other central arguable claims clear throughout the essay? Identify specific strengths and weaknesses in each of these.

8. Are the individual claims in the essay developed in a coherent fashion that supports and advances the central argument with specific evidence and logical warrants?

9. Which specific elements from the assigned sections of the Writer’s Handbook and The Craft of Research could this writer benefit from making better use of? Explain with specific examples from the essay and the texts.

10. Does the writer employ correct formatting and citation throughout the essay?

11. How would you assess the completeness and thoroughness of this essay and its incorporation of all required components of the instructor’s assigned drafting processes: excellent, satisfactory, partially complete, deficient?

12. At this stage, how would you rate the following components of the writing in this essay: a) its conceptual understanding; b) rhetorical strength and purpose; c) clarity of thesis; d) development and support of arguments; e) coherent flow and well-organized structure; and f) quality of language and mechanics?

13. What are the two greatest strengths of this essay, and how can the writer use those as a way to think about revision strategies?

14. What do you see as the two biggest problem spots or challenges this writer is attempting to confront in this essay? What specific advice would most help them deal with these in the revision process?

15. Identify one ambiguous or challenging detail or question in the narrative of Abraham and Isaac that you think this essay would benefit from considering further.