Peer Review Worksheet
H548: Graduate Seminar in Historiography, 2011-121
Writer:
Date and Title of Paper:
Editor:
1. What is the essay’s thesis statement?
2. What is the central topic, issue, or debate that the paper addresses?
3. Can you identify an argument in the paper? What is it?
This worksheet and the guidelines attached to it are based on the pedagogy of Prof. Paige Raibmon, Department
of History, UBC. Some modifications have been for H548D.
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4. What are the strengths of the paper? Which parts of the argument are convincing? Why are
they convincing?
5. Which parts of the argument need more elaboration, support, or evidence?
6. Provide two specific changes that you think the writer might make to improve the next draft.
a.)
b.)
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Suggestions for Successful Peer Reviews
One purpose of responding to other writers is to help them write a better paper in the
end. But reading the essays of your colleagues also will help you think more carefully about
your own choices and strategies as you work on the problems of argumentation and clarity in
your papers.
Before the workshop:
1. Read the draft carefully.
2. In the margins of each page, use a wavy line, or some notation of your own, to signal when
you notice yourself wondering about wordings or details, when you stop and have to re-read, or
when you feel uncertain about where an idea is leading to or coming from.
3. Write comments and suggestions in the margins. Engage in a “conversation” with the
draft as you read it.
4. Complete the “Peer Review Worksheet” for the essay.
In the seminar:
1. Be prepared to lead a discussion about the paper you have read and edited. Submit your
worksheet to the author at the end of the class.
2. We will discuss the strengths of each essay and the places where each essay may need
additional attention. Among the questions to be considered: Do readers report the same
strengths and weaknesses? Do they raise similar comments and concerns? Do they identify
similar points in need of clarification?
3. Give the writer adequate opportunity to respond and to ask questions of his or her own.
4. Rather than simply identifying passages that need revision, the aim is to work collectively
with the writer to try to clarify or reorganize passages with which the writer wants help.
5. Above all, be respectful of each other’s ideas and efforts. Sharing work with others is not
easy. Try not to make it harder by engaging in unnecessarily harsh criticism of each other’s
work. The point is to engage the ideas in the paper. But please be mindful that grammatical or
rhetorical errors ought not to be overlooked. As the great rhetorician Abraham Lincoln
explained, stylistic weaknesses invariably indicate what he labeled “feebleness” in thought. (In
making these comments, Lincoln was engaging in an act of self-criticism; he was not belittling
another writer.) Form and substance, for better or worse, in the end cannot be separated.
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