Draft Development Workshop
A CNU Writing Center Handout

Responses to classmates' drafts-general guidelines: Your goal here is to respond to your classmate's essay as a reader, not as a teacher. What this means is, we're not "correcting" each other's papers with red ink; we're responding to the writer's ideas in a manner that will let her or him know what's getting through, what could be clearer, what might need more elaboration, and what's working well. You should offer your responses in writing, being as specific as possible-pointing out passages, sentences, examples that may need additional attention to 'be all they can be.'

· Readers should remember that your job isn't to 'fix' what's 'wrong' with the paper, it's simply to offer your responses as a reader.
· Writers should try to understand what readers are trying to tell you, but not be tyrannized by what they say-it's your job to decide what to do with the responses.
· In addition to the questions below, writers should always feel free to ask for the kind of feedback they'd like to have.

Specific tasks (complete in class today):

· Quickly read the entire draft, making margin notes of good points, places where you need more information, places you become confused, and ideas the paper suggests to you
· Then answer the following questions about the paper on a separate sheet

1. What is the writer's controlling purpose, or thesis, in this paper? What definition of "politics" does the writer offer as his or her starting point?

2. Where could the writing go further? What is almost said here? Where do you want to know more? Where could the writing use more or less support in terms of resources (examples from the text), and why do you feel as you do? Does the writer explain what the reader is supposed to understand from the textual examples that she or he cites, or does the writer seem to just re-tell the story? Make a specific suggestion for improving the analytic content of the paper.

3. Offer one additional example that supports the writer's point and one example that counters the writer's point.

4. What did you learn from this paper?

5. Answer the writer's question:

Your revised essay will be due ______________, in class. Hand in (organize your package in this order): the revised copy (on top), the reader's report from today's class, and the draft from today's class.

return to resource page