Part of your grade will be based on your assessments of other people's work. I make you do this for a number of reasons. First, it is important for you to learn how to look at a work in progress and see how it is going. You will be doing this with your own work, of course, but it is very helpful to do this with someone else's stuff as well. It will of course also be helpful to you to have other students look at your work and tell you what they think. Each of you will turn in four critiques.

1. Critiques of topic statements
    Each of you will critique two other students' topic statements. These critiques should be about 1 page long, and are due the next class meeting. You should be asking fairly broad questions as you read these topics. Is it a worthwhile question? Does it seem doable? Does the list of sources seem sketchy? The author is still fairly early in the project, so they have time to fix even very fundamental problems.

2. Critique of the first draft
    Each of you will critique one other student's first draft. This will consist of marking up the copy provided and writing a brief summary of what you think. This critique is actually easier than the first one, since you do not have to do much heavy thinking. At this point it is a little too late for the author to do much to fix the fundamental nature of the paper. What you need to do in this critique is point out the weak spots in the argument and places where it is unclear.

3. Critique of oral presentation
    At the end of the class each of you will do an oral presentation on your paper. Each of you will also provide a brief (2-3 minute) oral commentary on one other person's oral presentation.

Writing a critique
    The purpose of writing the assessment is to be critical of other's work. Being critical is not just saying bad things, it is providing a critique of someone's work. You do not do your classmates any favors by being too polite. Every problem that you identify in their drafts can be fixed before the final copy. Every strong point that you point out can be developed further. The more critical your critique is the more grateful your classmates will be. And, of course, the better your critique is, the better your own grade will be.

Reading a critique
    Usually, when you first read someone's critique of your work you think they are an idiot. Your work was perfectly clear, how could anyone who is not brain-damaged fail to understand it? If other people are not understanding your work, the fault is almost always with you. Remember, the point is not to explain things to yourself; if that was all you wanted to do there would be no point in writing a paper. Also, if other people are not understanding what you are saying it probably means that you have not really thought through things as carefully as you could. Things always make sense in your head, but when you try to explain them to others they often turn out to be sort of fuzzy.