Pointing out weaknesses is good, but their evaluations will be more effective if they can suggest some strategies for improvement. Again, the assignment should be used as a guide for suggestions. It is important to remind students that they have to decide whether and how they will incorporate their peers' suggestions into their papers. They can accept or reject the advice that they are given, and ultimately, each individual writer is responsible for his or her final document. Most students will find that they use some of their peers' remarks and disregard others.
Some instructors find evaluation checklists a useful tool in evaluating student essays.
Furthermore, checklists can ensure that students are informed about the evaluation process, so that they may more effectively write and revise their papers. Checklists may also be useful for student-instructor debriefing on an assignment because they help establish mutual understanding between student and teacher. Checklists may take a number of forms, from a list assigning values to the components of a paper, to one that just lists components, allowing space for instructor comments. Whatever checklist is used should emanate from the assignment given, and it should be distributed to students when the assignment is distributed, so that they may use it as a tool to help guide their writing processes. Many instructors do not like checklists, preferring instead to grade holistically, evaluating the success of the paper as a whole.