Peer Review Sheet: Ethnography Paper

Authors name: Alison DeChambeau

Reviewers name: Elijah Wells

Author: Before exchanging papers with one of your classmates, fill in the following
information about your draft.

1. State the main purpose of your ethnography: Are you trying to explain an aspect of
the subculture/site to outsiders? Do you want to convince outsiders of the subculture/sites
value? Would you like members of the subculture/site to examine something about
themselves? Are you comparing outsiders to insiders? If so, do you favor one side?
- Im explaining an aspect of the subculture of runners to outsiders. Id like for outsiders to
understand the running community and everything thats involved with it.

2. Describe the best section of your ethnography.

- I like when I talk about when I went to the running store and also the section where I talked
about the documentary that I watched about running.

3. Explain one or two problems that you are having with this draft that you want your
reader to focus on.
- I feel as if I need a stronger introduction and conclusion. I also think the overall flow of my
paper could be better organized.

Reviewer: Read the authors comments above, and read the entire draft through once
without making any comments. Then reread the draft in order to answer the following
questions.

1. Locate at least two key passages in the ethnography. Give an example of something
the writer does well. Suggest areas that could benefit from more description of the
subculture, more explanation of the thesis, or forms of information that are needed to
improve the passages.
You give a good description of what an average runner should look like with the description of
what the lady is wearing and looks like that comes in the store. Didnt find any instances
where you werent clear with your writing, but you were right about the flow. Some of the
sentences were really short and I think they couldve been brought together to have a better
flow.


2. Find a section where the author uses primary research. Is the research used
appropriately? Is it clear how the research supports the point being made by the author?
Suggest areas where more primary research would be useful to help improve the ethnography.
Idea of the paper was clearly stated in the primary research but could have maybe joined a
race or a public running event to get more research?

3. Find a section where the author uses secondary research. Is the research used
appropriately? Is it clear how the research supports the point being made by the author?
Suggest areas where more secondary research would be useful to help improve the
ethnography.
Documentary gave good background of public races, but couldve used a print source to give
other information.

4. What overall idea does the ethnography convey to you? How does your notion of the
main idea compare to the authors? Explain how the author might revise the essay to make
the thesis clearer; point out specific ways to accomplish this.
Gives a background of runners in the running community. It was obvious what the paper was
about and there is little that could be done to portray the idea better in my mind.

5. Suggest solutions to the problem(s) the author wanted you to focus on.

The flow of the paper could be fixed by connecting ideas and sentences better and the main
idea in the introduction could be better explained by giving more information before the
thesis.