Outcome 4 (Peer Review) – Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process. (Word Count: 318)
In the beginning of my writing journey this year, as well as the years before that, I never really found value in peer reviewing. In high school, any time we would be told to peer review, my partners would do the bare minimum in order to simply be done with the assignment, and I found my own efforts would be negatively effected as I felt they didn’t want my help. When it came to our first peer review session, I was really nervous because I didn’t like the idea of people having to critique my work, but I was even more nervous to give them my own honest feedback.
The first peer review comments consisted largely of suggestions such as “fix this spelling mistake” or “make this sentence shorter”. But by the end of the semester, I was receiving extremely helpful feedback, while simultaneously learning from correcting others papers as well. Although my first two peer review sessions weren’t the best, as my partners only had around a half a page each when we came to class, I felt as though I was still able to help guide them in a general direction, as well as provide some feedback on what they already had.
In the photo below, I have included an example of how I would give helpful comments and try to elaborate on possible solutions within my peers’ essays, as well as the end comments I would provide. When I was critiquing my peers’ work, I always found that I felt better doing so if I provided a possible way to fix the issue, as it helped me get my point across, while also helping them. By following the guide to peer reviews, I was able to shift my focus more towards the important aspects of the paper rather than the surface level spelling errors and grammar mistakes that were in the forefront of my comments.
