Topic:

Peer review

This topic page includes introductory information, a list of readings, and questions to guide your
reading and prepare you for class discussion; it may also include an individual or group
assignment, which may or may not be graded.

Introduction
Many times during this semester, you will be called on to provide a peer review to a classmate on
a project or part of a project. You will also receive a peer review on each such project. Peer review
provides two very different pedagogical benefits:
1. Getting feedback from another audience on your communications is a good way to improve
your project.
2. Learning how to review someone elses communication and give constructive feedback on
it is excellent training for being able to review your own communications and edit them
yourself. The act of reviewing many communications by many other authors can help you
to distance yourself from the texts1 you review, so that when you look over your own
communications, you can approach them with some detachment.

Readings for this topic

Read the following entries in Alred, Brusaw and Oliu (2015; ABO).
revision (including the Digital Tip: Incorporating Tracked Changes on p. 504)
proofreading

Breuch, L.K. (2010). Peer review tutorial. (Available in the resources tab on T-Square.)

Reading questions

While reading ABO, consider the following thoughts:

ABO describes three stages of proofreading, First-stage, Second-stage, and Final-stage
review. Larson has problems with this on two levels. First, it suggests there are three
stages, when in fact there may be one or five (or any other number of) stages. Second, it
places the Survey of your overall goals: audience needs and purpose in the final stage. But
Larson strongly suggests the following process for proofreading your own papers and
those of others:
o First: Look at whether the text is structured so as to meet the needs of the audience
in this rhetorical situation. Dont sweat the small stuff means not to worry about
the details. If the text fails overall to achieve its purpose, no amount of editing of
grammar, usage, and punctuation will fix it; and as it would need to be revised
significantly, the copyediting could be wasted if edited text is later deleted or
completely rewritten.
o Second: Look at the mid-level organization (if the document is written in prose).
Does every paragraph have an apparent purpose? Does it provide support for that
purpose? If the document is in another mode (video, lets say), do its larger parts

1 Construing that term broadly to include multimodal texts.
2015 Brian N. Larson

Topic: Peer review

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contribute to the overall messagedo they advance the authors purpose in the
rhetorical situation?
o Third: Look at the details. If the higher-level issues (rhetorical purpose,
organization, paragraph structure, etc.) are well-addressed, then invest time in
correcting typos or identifying minor stylistic problems.
For this class, you should know how to proofread a document using Microsoft Words
comment and track-changes functions and using markup features of a software package
that can read and edit PDF files. If you do not know how to do these things, you should do a
web search to find instructions appropriate for the software on your computer.

When reading the Breuch guidelines for peer review, keep in mind the following:
You may be reviewing a text from another student that is not in Microsoft Word, so dont
always expect to be able to use Words features for peer review.
Some of the menu selections in this essay are outdated and dont work with newer versions
of Word or versions on Windows vs. Mac. You can always find instructions for your
software by doing a web search.

Classroom activities for this topic

None.

Assignments for this topic

None.

Works cited
Alred, G. J., Brusaw, C. T., & Oliu, W. E. (2015). Handbook of Technical Writing (11th edition).
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

2015 Brian N. Larson

Topic: Peer review

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