Strategies for Teaching with Online Tools
Bedford Workshops on Teaching Writing
Nick Carbone, New Media Consultant
Bedford/St. Martin's
ncarbone@bedfordstmartins.com
 Workshop Home
How to Write Good Peer Comments

Alternatives to Vague Assertions

Instead of writing adjectives such as good, awk, flows well, nice, needs work, development?, and so on, write descriptions of what you see and explanations of what you like or think is needed. Give the writer information she or he can work with and make decisions about, details that will engage! Consider these alternatives to the vague assertions:
  1. Instead of Your Writing is Good:

  2. You do a good job in your essay of using the kinds of specific terminology (proximity, timeliness, prominence) needed to do an analysis of news sources; also, your paper progesses in a logical way, going from print, to broadcast, to the newest--the Internet. I didn't have any trouble following your argument because you made it clear what order you would be discussing both the news sources and news factors in.
  3. Instead of awk:

  4. In your third paragraph, I got lost and found the reading hard to follow for a couple of reasons. In the first sentence you use the phrase "this condition," but I'm not sure what that refers to. Also, the next three sentences in a row say pretty much the same thing, only with slight variations. You repeat the words "reasons," "news critics," and "story" in each, adding only a slight detail. It gets hard to see how the details are all that different, but it looks like they might be. You might want to try going from three sentences to one, maybe by deleting two of them to start, and just adding the details unique to them into the one sentence you keep.
  5. And as for Jane's cat . . .

  6. She's a black siamese, very sleek, with soft paws because she's declawed and stays indoors on soft carpets, softer couches, and even softer bedspreads. She has pale green eyes and purrs whenever you scratch behind her ears, which will be often if you visit because Sheila, that's her name, loves to lap-leap and rub her head against your hand.