Peer Editing Sheet - Essay Six: Counterargument (Plessy v. Ferguson)

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 statements and the central arguable claims of the essay as you read.

2. Where are this essay’s other main claims located? Are they clearly linked conceptually to the overarching thesis? If not, how might this writer begin to address that problem?

3. The prompt asks the writer to interpret the arguments in the passage from the Plessy case. How well does the essay do this? Identify its strengths and weaknesses with specific reference to the passage and the legal case as a whole.

4. The prompt also asks you to evaluate the arguments. Assess this writer’s evaluation of the arguments in the passage. Which assumptions, premises, and conclusions in those arguments does this writer identify, and why? Be specific.

5. How does this writer use concepts from the Writer’s Handbook chapter on “Logical Fallacies” to guide and support his or her analysis?

6. How does this writer use concepts from the Writer’s Handbook chapter on “Counterarguments,” including the six strategies listed as starting points for analysis, to guide and support his or her analysis?

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

8. Does the writer employ correct MLA formatting and parenthetical citation throughout the essay?

9. 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?

10. 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?

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

12. 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?