Apologies for the late video! I think I misspoke somewhere in it and referred to Blackboard by force of habit since I’ve used that LMS for such a long time; but if I ever say Blackboard what I mean is D2L 🤦🏾‍♀️

Describe, Evaluate, Suggest

Since you’re making progress towards your drafts, let’s talk today about how to effectively do peer review. Peer review or workshop where you read and comment on another’s work like a co-author or literary agent or editor is essential to the drafting process. It allows you to see how a diverse audience understands and responds to your writing. And it also allows you to actively think alongside another writer, meaning you can imitate and experiment with what you read in your own writing. It can be as simple as noticing, “Oh, you left out this requirement. Oh, I’m missing it too,” or as complex as observing, “Your organization in your controlling idea paragraph is more step by step than mine. So it’s clearer, I should try to organize my controlling idea paragraph.” Similarly, helpful reviewers don’t just evaluate a draft. They articulate the reasons for that evaluation. It’s easy to uncritically praise someone by saying “This is great!” or “I love this!” but it doesn’t tell the writer what to do next. It’s similarly easy and unhelpful to be overly critical by saying “This didn’t do what the assignment asked,” or “I don’t understand what you mean,” since this doesn’t tell the writer what specific aspects they’re lacking or how to begin addressing them. Helpful comments tell writers a lot about a given draft its strengths and weaknesses, its goals and possibilities. For instance, instead of saying “Your controlling idea is good,” a helpful reviewer says, “Your controlling idea is clear, non-obvious, and not just a fact and specific to the chosen subreddit and sets up a clear direction for the paper. But I also wasn’t totally sure how you were connecting the words you mentioned to the community’s atmosphere of elitism.” This reviewer doesn’t just say it’s good, but is thinking critically about what a good controlling idea for this paper it looks like, and indicating what steps the writer still needs to take.

So here are the steps you’ll take to workshop each other’s Phase 1 drafts. First of all, do not talk about what you intended to write or believe you achieved. This will change the feedback you receive, as your reader will now be influenced by what you had to say and may not be able to stick as strictly to what you put on paper. Next, read the assignment prompt together and make note of the parameters you’re expected to meet. For instance, for the discourse community narrative, your controlling idea must explore or explain some idea or tension about the relationship between language and culture. In order to satisfy the Phase 1 criteria. You’ll then share Google Doc links in your Slack workshop group workspaces once they’re assigned. Make sure you’ve set your sharing permissions so your peers and I can view and comment in the document, skim the writer’s paper quickly to get a general sense of what they aim to do and what they actually accomplished, underline controlling ideas key evidence, and jot down a quick summary restating the writer’s controlling idea. Then read the draft more critically and closely. As you do try out the “describe, evaluate, suggest” framework for how to give feedback. First, describe: say what you see as a reader–that is, restate the writer’s controlling idea and goals in your own words. Second, evaluate: explain how the text meets or doesn’t meet the assignment criteria. Third, suggest: offer concrete advice for improvement. Consider also what you understand or don’t understand, what you think meets or doesn’t meet the goals of the assignment, and what seems missing or irrelevant. What do you think the writer is trying to accomplish? What can change in the draft to make it stronger? Don’t feel bad about giving tough advice as long as it’s helpful advice. When writers need to make big changes, particularly in their controlling ideas, there’s no two ways around it. The Essay Review Form will help walk you through this process for each of our drafts in this class.

Writers who revise most effectively receive feedback as constructively as they give it. They will, after workshop, read the feedback, select the feedback that will lead to the most important changes, prioritize tasks reflect on how to make changes that address the feedback and revise the original draft and/or continue drafting in ways that include those changes. Even if you invest just 10 minutes into making a revision plan it can make a big difference in what and how you revise. As part of your group workshop, you’ll complete the Essay 1 Phase 1 Review Form posted to the Week 3 materials folder on [D2L, not Blackboard]. This form includes space for descriptive and explanatory short answers. evaluative answers on a scale from one to five about assignment criteria, clarity, specificity and other aspects and long answers for concrete suggestions for improvement. This form will be emailed to both you and the writer whose work you reviewed on submission. I will also receive a copy. Independently of this form, you will also comment on the writer’s Google Doc, underline the controlling idea and key evidence, comment on lines you feel effectively build the writer’s claim and accomplish the writer’s purpose. Don’t be afraid to offer critiques, and soften the impact of those critiques with reassurance about the draft’s strengths. If the draft is developed enough, identify paragraphs that offer the strongest support for the claim through showing how pieces of evidence correlate to the claim. If all you’re working with is the controlling idea paragraph and an outline, help the writer ensure that they are specific, clear, and unique to the subreddit or community they’re looking at, that they’re fulfilling the assignment criteria, and that they’re setting up a draft that sets out to explain how they arrived at their controlling idea with multiple pieces of evidence that, when analyzed, support their research hypothesis.

You’re always encouraged to workshop each other more than once, but for each phase of drafting, you are required to do at least one workshop. Evidence of workshops will be collected through completion of the peer review form, and any post-workshop reflections that will be submitted with your draft on Slack. Your drafts are due to me by 5pm on Friday, so I advise you to schedule your workshops for Thursday during our class time if you want to meet face-to-face with your group, when all of you are likely to be available, and when I will also be available in case you need me to pop in on a Zoom call or Slack discussion. You’ll then have time to revise after workshop before you submit that phase of drafting to me. We will discuss any questions you have about this process of drafting or revision in class on Tuesday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai