As you begin reading the essay that you will critique, keep foremost in your mind that the main goal is to help improve the essay. You must resist the temptation to avoid actual criticism in order not to hurt the author’s feelings. Be critical, fair, and courteous. As these critiques are an official course assignment, you’re being evaluated on your sincere engagement with your partner’s essay. Avoid entirely subjective complaints (“I don’t like how you phrased this”). This does not help anyone do anything. Instead, make a more concrete criticism that can be acted upon: (“Here it was difficult to follow the writing; I wasn’t sure what the point of this paragraph was.”).
You will add comments to the original critique by inserting comments in double square brackets [[like this]] to make them stand out from the original text. In addition, please provide 5-10 bullet point comments at the end of the critique that provide a few synthetic comments about the essay as a whole.
Below are a list of questions you should be asking yourself and comment on in your critiques. Does the essay …