Descriptive Responding Guidelines 1

The following is a set of guidelines to helps students respond to each other's writing in "descriptive" manner as opposed to a critical one. This is very useful when participating in peer review workshops. To help your peer become a better writer, you do not need to be a "teacher" or an "editor," but rather you only need to be a good, honest reader.

When you’re working on a piece of writing, you may want to hold off receiving any criticism for a while, but you’d still like some feedback to find out how your work is coming across to the reader. Oftentimes, your readers can give you ideas about how to rethink and reshape your work. It helps if your readers/listeners think of themselves as your allies or cowriters. Here is a group of ways that you as a reader can give descriptive, noncritical feedback to a writer.

Four ways to be descriptive in your responses

Pointing

Summarizing

Listening for What’s Almost Said or Implied

Finding the Generative Center

Pointing

Which words, phrases, or features of the writing do you find most striking or memorable (or which do you like the best)?

Summarizing

What do you hear the piece saying? What’s the main meaning or message?

Listening for what's almost said or implied

What do you think the writer is going to say but doesn’t? What ideas seem to hover around the edges? What do you end up wanting to hear more about?

Finding the generative center

What do you sense as the generative center or the source of energy for the piece? (This center might not be the main point or the “thesis.” Sometimes an image, phrase, detail, or digression seems to give special life or weight to the piece. The center might be something minor that is “trying” to be major.)