How to Provide a Critique to Your Classmate

Evaluating another student can help you both to grow academically.

Critiquing a classmate can be challenging or even uncomfortable. Doing so in a positive and encouraging manner will help ease any criticisms you may have and inspire the person being reviewed to improve her participation or writing skills. Evaluating classmates offers a rare opportunity to receive fresh feedback from someone other than the teacher. The student critique could even result in new ideas and suggestions that the teacher may not have thought of.

Instructions

1. Read or evaluate the student's work fully. If reviewing a project, evaluate all aspects of the project so that you can give an educated and well-informed critique. For example, if reviewing a book report, the aspects evaluated would include the student's grammar, sentence structure, chronological organization and descriptive wording.

2. Take notes of all the positive aspects of the student's work as well as the areas that could be improved upon.

3. Present your observations and conclusions in a constructive and positive manner. Degrading or putting down the student's work in a vague or broad manner, such as "this paper doesn't make sense," will not help the student improve. Instead suggest specifics, such as "I didn't understand the conclusion on page three, providing more examples would make it more clear."

4. Focus on what was done well and also what could have been better. Here is an example: "Your ideas were very creative and explained well. The paper would read better if you double-checked your grammar and corrected typos next time."

5. Include strategies for improvement along with any criticisms. For example, you could say,"Next time, try to include more research sources. Use books and magazines along with websites in order to provide different types of sources."

Tips & Warnings

• Since some students may not respond to critiques well, especially coming from a peer, always reinforce any negatives with positives. For example, if the student had many grammatical mistakes but was very descriptive, tell him, "Your descriptive wording helped to relay the story well. Just keep in mind the grammar rules so your ideas are presented clearly." Be cautious in your wording. Don't tell a student that her grammar is terrible. Instead, tell the student that grammar is something he should try and work on in future papers.

References

• Missouri: Critique
• Shoreline: Instructions