Reading Skills Main Page | General Strategies for Effective Reading | Reading a Text for the First Time | Re-Reading
Reading Difficult Passages | Reading Your Colleague's Papers | Reading Your Own Papers

Reading Skills: Reading Your Colleagues' Papers

During the semester, your 100 or 100R teacher will ask you to read papers written by other students. This is a very special form of reading, because in addition to trying to "get" the other writer's ideas, you will be asked to help that other writer improve his or her paper. Here are some tips for reading other students' papers effectively:

• Be respectful. Assume that your classmate has worked hard on the paper, and is seriously seeking advice for revising the paper. Treat another writer's work with the same respect that you want others to give to your work.

• Remember that your job is not to evaluate the success of the paper. Instead, it is your task to offer practical suggestions that will help the writer revise, to improve the paper from whatever level it’s at when you read it.

• Try to read the paper as if it is your paper. If this were a draft of your own paper, what would you do next?

• Try to read the paper as if you are the teacher. What comments is the teacher likely to write in the margins or at the end of the paper? What can the writer do to get the teacher to write more appreciative comments (such as "this is a great point" or "you've done a nice job of explaining Pollan’s objections to animal rights activism," or "this idea is much clearer that it was in your first draft"), and fewer comments about problems in the paper.