_________________________reviewed _________________________’s paper

Date:

Please respond in detailed, complete sentences, and always explain your answer.

IN GENERAL

What did you like best about this paper? Why?

What do you like least about this paper? How can it be improved?

Other general comments?

FOCUS

What is your partner’s thesis or claim? Where is it located? Discuss questions or thoughts about the claim here.

Do you get a sense of the paper’s direction and focus early on? Why or why not?

Has your partner identified an issue? Does your partner divide his or her big topic/issue into 3 or 4 main sections to support the claim? What are they?

DEVELOPMENT / STYLE

Has the subject matter been explored and explained thoroughly? Do you have questions about what is going on in any of the sections? What sections need more development?

Did the author use any good argument strategies (induction, deduction, argument by authority, statistics, etc)? Name one.

Did the author use any fallacious logic or shady techniques (post hoc, ad hominem, hasty generalizations)? If so, where?

Does the author use an effective introduction? What is it? Does the introduction grab your interest? Does it set up the rest of the paper? Is there a creative technique that the author could add to make his or her introduction livelier?

Does the author use an effective conclusion strategy? What is it? Does it bring the paper to a satisfactory conclusion?

ORGANIZATION

Does the body of the paper follow the organization suggested by the introduction?

Does each body paragraph have a topic sentence or unifying idea? Could you underline each one? If you had to go back to outline this paper, could you?

Does the paper have smooth transitions from paragraph to paragraph? Does the essay flow well from idea to idea? Where can these links be smoother?

MECHANICS:
Were you impeded by grammatical or mechanical errors?