Peer Review for Michaela Harrington (12b)

            This blog post will contain the peer review for a student in a different section. The post will analyze the level of development of their sources, as well as the credibility and diversity of them.

1.     I decided to peer review Michaela Harrington’s research report.

2.     I decided to make a research recommendation. I discussed the credibility of her sources, and how she could work on diversifying her sources. I also described the level of detail that her descriptions went into.

3.     There are a few ways in which I helped Michaela with my feedback. For one, I suggested describing the sources in greater detail. Some of the sources lack a description of the audience, purpose, or both. I recommended incorporating this in order to better understand each source as a whole. I also suggested working on her explanations behind the credibility of each source. If the source tends to be liberal, there is bias, which decreases the credibility of the source. This is especially true if the source is a mere description of the author’s opinion. The author’s opinion does not carry much validity. This will decrease the credibility of the source. I also suggested diversifying her sources a little more. Most of them are from newscast stations that only have videos of interviews. These videos will likely be difficult to change into solely audio segments. Also, newscast stations tend to have some bias, so sources from academic journals or publications would provide a different perspective on the issue (and provide more validity).

4.     In order to effectively analyze a source, one must describe the author’s purpose, and the point that they are trying to make. I incorporated the Thinking through the Process section of the Student’s Guide on page 211. I recommended that Michaela analyzes each aspect of the source in order to better understand what and who the source is addressing (i.e. purpose and audience). For instance, she states that one of her sources doesn’t really have a purpose because it is just a statement of the author’s opinion. All publications have some underlying purpose to them, and it is important to recognize this when analyzing a source.

          5.  One thing that I admired about Michaela’s research report is the development of each source’s rhetorical situation. She goes in to great detail explaining how the use of aspects (like ethos) contribute to how the source presents its argument. This helps the audience/student better understand the framework of the argument. This has inspired me to be more thorough in my analysis of the sources that I use. This level of analysis will help me better understand the source as a whole.