peer review 146

For this assignment, you’ll switch with two group members, as usual. Work on one group member’s today, and one at home, either tonight or tomorrow. All peer review feedback is due back to your partner by TOMORROW NIGHT at MIDNIGHT, or asap.

Make sure you include a LINK to your creative project, or other way for your partner to access the creative project, at the top of the essay draft you provide to them!!

First, focus on the questions your peer partner has left you in the margins of their paper. Questions may be referring to the essay and/or the creative project.

Second, try to focus most of your feedback around the companion essay. The creative project is only as successful as the essay and how it explains the choices being made. In some cases, the creative project may be lacking, or behind. As you read, leave your comments in the margins, or you may group it all into one big comment at the end of the draft. Here’s what you should be looking for, and what you should focus your comments around:

• How specifically is the author defining their FORM (ie: reddit, twitter, instagram, blog, etc.)? Does it seem to go beyond the most OBVIOUS and OBSERVABLE traits of the genre? If not, let them know that their definition so far seems perhaps too general, too vague, or too simple.
• Does the author provide a good model for the form of their creative project, and are they using that model to help: a.) define the conventions of that form, and b.) illustrate how they are using the same conventions in a unique way? A model would be an example of the same form of text they’re trying to create (so, if they’re doing a reddit thread, they should include reference to another reddit thread, etc.) They may include other models as well, pertaining to content. We just want to make sure they are absolutely referencing a model related to the FORM of their project.
• Does the author actually define their audience and rhetor? Do these places in the essay feel too vague/general to you? Do you feel they could add more to their analysis of audience and rhetor? How so? Why or why not?
• Does the author focus on both the form AND content of their creative text when analyzing: a.) how their project is “plausible and believable,” and b.) how their project is creepy? Remember that with online legends a huge factor of whether a story is deemed “creepy” is whether it is “believable.” You should be appealing to both how the FORM (website/social media platform/etc., writing style/diction, multi-modality) of your project as well as the CONTENT (characters, settings, themes, plot, messages, atmospheres, etc.) of your project BOTH contribute to the plausibility and realism of your project.

TIP: Remember that your partner’s approach to these topics may not take place in a specific order or way that is consistent with how you approach them in your essay. That’s okay. It is also important to look at your partner’s organizational scheme and logical flow of information and to let them know if there are parts of their essay that feel rushed, confusing, or just plain don’t make sense. You’ll have the first forty minutes of class today to work on this. Feel free to discuss openly with one another as you read and peer edit each other’s papers.