Extra Guidelines for Peer Critiques

The following questions can be used to guide you as you read the drafts you are assigned to peer critique. In addition to the questions asked of you in the assignment prompt, these questions will help you break down your commentary by specific areas of the draft. These questions can be useful for organizing your own thoughts on the drafts, targeting specific issues within each critique. Notice that none of these relate to the small editing issues within a draft. You will need to focus on the larger issues presented here rather than commenting on specific spelling, grammar, or mechanical issues. The exception would be identifying a pattern in those type of errors that you can briefly mention.


Overall thoughts: What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the draft? What might be confusing to readers? What will readers need to know more about?

Assignment: Does the draft carry out the assignment and meet the stated criteria?

Thesis: Does the draft follow through with what the thesis promises?

Audience: Does the draft interest and appeal to its intended audience?

Major Points: Do any points need to be explained more or less fully? Do any points seem confusing? Should any be eliminated or added? Are they well supported?

Organization and flow: Is the writing easy to follow? Are the ideas presented in an order that will make sense to the reader? Do effective transitions ease the flow between paragraphs and ideas?

Paragraphs: Which paragraphs are clearest and most interesting? Which need further development?