Here’s a guide to workshopping each other’s (and your own) drafts. Keep the General Feedback Post handy and refer to it as you go through the peer texts. (It might be helpful for your peers if you also mark if/where you see the higher order concerns, or HOCs, described in the General Feedback Post.)
- Using a highlighter or a different color font, identify the writer’s claim and all the places it appears throughout the essay (it should be present throughout).
- Using a different color, go through the peer text and highlight sentences that are “Chekhov’s guns”—unnecessary statements that seem significant but are never followed up on—and determine if the line(s) should be removed, or how they should be addressed throughout the essay.
- Finally, using a third color, identify where the primary skill of the assignment is occurring: e.g., for the Critical Response Essay, where is the writer critically engaging with/responding to Young’s essay? For the Conversation Essay, where is the writer creating conversation between two sources?
- Determine how each transition sentence (first and last sentences of paragraphs) links back to and expands on a particular piece of the claim.
With the feedback for your diagnostic exercise, you can practice trying to locate places of revision in your work, but revising that exercise isn’t necessary. We’ll discuss the steps you might take while revising later on in class regarding the two primary assignments.
