Guidelines for Personal Essay Group Review

The guidelines are posted below. You might want to print them out so you can follow them while responding. Please follow these, respond to your group members' papers with specific written comments (you can post comments to the blog; use email if something doesn't work right with that), and print and attach the comments to your draft. On Monday turn in the final, revised version of the paper along with the draft from Friday with the printed comments. Please email me with any questions/issues.

Also, please note the sections in the SF writer that you may find helpful in writing your essay. Flip through and find the places that may be most relevant to your particular writing situation:

Part 1: Working as a Writer
Part 2: Shaping Language
Part 7: Understanding Grammar

1020 Darling
Guidelines for Personal Essay Group Review

Please respond to at least 3 papers from your group. Look at the comments and respond to those who have not otherwise received comments (ie. make sure everyone in your group gets 3 readings/sets of comments in response to their paper). Please send me email if you are having trouble getting comments on your paper from your group members.

To the Writer: Write a little about the purpose and audience for your essay and attach it to the bottom of your essay blog post so your group members can see what you’ve said about the following: What are you trying to accomplish and how does the paper go about doing that? Who is your audience for this paper and how did you take that into consideration while writing?


To the Reader:

Write comments to the writer’s blog post that respond specifically and thoughtfully to the following:

Does the essay have a clear focus? What is it; what is the main idea?

Is the essay clearly and fully developed around this focus/main idea? How might the writer focus more clearly? Do places in the essay need further explanation and development? Where (point these out specifically in your comments to the writer) and how might these places be further developed? Does the writer need to use more or more specific examples as support for the claims s/he is making? Respond and explain.

How is the essay organized? Offer the writer suggestions for more effectively organizing the material in the essay.

Does the essay cohere? Does it flow clearly and effectively; does it make sense from beginning to end? Do the individual paragraphs make sense from sentence to sentence. Are they thoughtful and fully developed? Are there any paragraphs that need to be expanded or are there places that need more explanation? Are the individual sentences grammatically and structurally correct? Are there sentence-level errors that need to be fixed? Explain and respond specifically and fully so that the writer can revise her/his paper effectively.