English 1301

Guidelines for Peer Review

Instructions for Peer Review
Peer reviews are an essential part of the revision process, as it’s important to receive feedback on your writing. Even the best writers ask for others to read their work. All you need to do is turn to the acknowledgement section of many books to find praise for others who have read drafts of the book. All important writing should be read by someone else prior to submission.

To earn credit for peer review, you must submit a draft to the peer review discussion board by the due date and comment on one of your classmates’ drafts by the second due date (the schedule lists two due dates: the first is when you must submit your draft; the second is when you must submit your responses to others). You must submit a draft AND comment on someone else’s draft to earn any credit for peer review. Just submitting a draft OR just commenting on someone’s draft will not earn credit.

Posting Your Draft

To post your draft, go to the discussion board for peer review included within the unit.
Create a new thread and post your draft as an attachment.  Your attachment must be saved as a or x document. Please ensure that your draft uploads correctly.
Responding to Classmates
Select a classmate’s thread and download his/her attached draft.
Reply to his/her thread to indicate the draft is under review (i.e. John Dow is currently reviewing the document).  Do not select the paper if someone else is already reviewing.
Read the draft carefully and respond to the questions listed below, either in a new document or at the top of your classmate’s document. At the very least, you must answer the questions, but you can also use the “Comment” function in Microsoft Word to write comments to your classmates within the essay (put your cursor where you want the comment, go to the “Review” tab in Microsoft Word, and select “New Comment”).
Complete the review and save the document to your computer.
Once you have completed the review, reply to your classmate’s thread and upload the review.
Questions for Peer Review
1. Read your peer’s essay from beginning to end just to let its ideas wash over you.  What are your initial thoughts? Did your peer satisfy the requirements of assignment?  Please explain in detail.

2. Review the essay’s title as well as its introduction and conclusion.  Think about the relationships among these three components. Do they match or do they disagree? Make note of strengths or weaknesses in these crucial areas.  Please explain in detail.

3. Find the essay’s thesis.  Is it clear? Is it well positioned? Paraphrase (put in your own words) the thesis of the essay to check your understanding. Review the assignment guidelines to ensure that your peer’s thesis is on target. Make note of strengths or weaknesses in this area. Please explain in detail.

4. Focus on the individual paragraphs of the essay.  Does each paragraph have a topic sentence that previews the ideas of the paragraph? Observe the essay’s development of paragraphs.  Does each paragraph have a single main idea that relates to the thesis?  Are there any paragraphs that seem disconnected or out of place?

5. Consider the essay’s use of the English language.  Are sentence structures, grammar, spelling, punctuation and mechanics employed effectively, or do errors distract the reader from understanding and enjoying the writer’s analysis? Make note of strengths and weaknesses in this area.  Please explain in detail.

Remember: When in doubt about how to do the peer review, be honest, helpful, and constructive. Saying “Great job! Don’t change a word!” never helped anyone to be a better writer.

SEE ATTACHMENT BELOW FOR PEER REVIEW

Nguyen 2

Huong Nguyen

Professor’s name

English 1301

February 21, 2018

“Segregation Only” – Outside Looking In

Gordon Parks is black American, who spent his two weeks on assignment in Alabama. Then, he published 12-page photo essay in September 1956 issued by LIFE magazine with Robert Wallace’s article “The Restraints: Open and Hidden.” Parks’ images gave the world a new look at the civil right movement. Parks shows the readers how black families lived under Jim Crow law – the law that enforced racial segregation in the South in 1877 and the beginning of the Civil Right Movement in the 1950s. After sixty years missing, those images – “Segregation Story” are on view again.

Jim Crow law is a designation for black Americans’ segregated life. From late 1870s, Southern state legislatures, no longer controlled by carpetbaggers and freedmen, passed laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons of colour” in public transportation and schools. The segregation principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theaters, and restaurants in an effort to prevent any contact between blacks and whites as equals.

Gordon Parks has been successful to show the world how black Americans’ life through his work and what hidden behind “Segregation Story.” The picture has a group of children peers across a chain-link fence into a whites-only playground with a Ferris wheel. Although they had access to a “separate but equal” recreational area in their own neighborhood, this photograph captures the allure of this other, inaccessible space. The children, likely innocent to the cruel implication of their exclusion, longingly reach their hands out to the mysterious and forbidden arena beyond. This pristinely manicured lawn on the other side of the fence contrasts with overgrowth of weeds in the foreground suggesting the persistent reality of racial inequality.

The more I see of Parks’ work, the more I admire it. A sense of history, truth and injustice; a sense of beauty; above all, a sense of composition and knowing the right time to take a photograph to tell the story. It’s all there, right in front of us, in most of the photograph. Photograph of institutionalized racism and the American apartheid, “the state of being apart”, laid bare for all to see. The most intimate moment of beauty that brings me to tears, the photograph at the bottom of the posting Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956. Just look at the light that Parks uses, this drawing light. And then use of depth of field, color, composition (horizontal, vertical and diagonal elements) that leads the eye into the image and the utter, what can you say, engagement – no – quiescent knowingness of children. This’s a wondrous thing.

Notice the contrast range allowing shadow detail and highlight areas to be held in balance. Also notice how in the image Parks lets the eye settle in the center of the image – in this image, the out focus of the playground and only focus the six young girls. This creates “separate but equal” and racial inequality for black Americans.

Parks uses the two elements – composition and highlighting/ light – so intelligential. He gives me an idea that “A picture contains million words.” Composition and highlighting give this image an emotional appeal to viewers with a message

“separate but equal” – “A visual argument against the oppressive nature of segregation.

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“In 1941, Parks began a tenure photographing for the Farm Security Administration under Roy Striker, following in the footsteps of great social action photographers including Jack Delano, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. ‘I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs,’ Parks told an interviewer in 1999. ‘I knew at that point I had to have a camera.’

Work sites:

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http://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/archive/segregation-story-1956?view=slider#6

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https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/revisiting-gordon-parkss-segregation-story-60-years-later/#

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gordon-parks-segregation-photo-essay_us_56379e59e4b0631799131a31

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https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law