Peer review is another thing overlooked in high school. We would spend ten minutes maximum going over our peers work and would only focus on the grammatical errors. When I got to college I then learned that although these are helpful, they aren’t what is going to help the writer make their writing better. You need to help the writer with sentence structure, making connections to their life and sources, and to make sure all their points are getting across they way they had hoped for. Below are some of my first peer review comments back when we wrote our first essay on empathy.
While making my comments I was scared of being to harsh so I tried to make them informative while also being nice at the end. This works, but I feel as if it can lead to the writer brushing the comment off because it wasn’t all critical. That is why I learned to be straight up with my comments. I also learned that it is good to balance both critical and encouraging comments. This is so the writer doesn’t feel like all they did was bad writing. We need to help applaud the good things they wrote. This is shown in end comments. Below is my most recent end comment and some of my most recent peer review comments.
As you can see through my new comments, I left more distinctly editorial comments that showed the writer exactly what they could improve upon. I also kept the positivity in my comments to let the writer know that they are still doing something right. In the end comment, I included their strong suits and was able to fully let my peer know what they are doing well. I also was able to tell them the main structural things they could work on to further develop their writing.
My peers also did this in return to me. This is very helpful as I know the few things I can improve on to make my writing more clear for readers and so I can make my points without being confused. I was then able to use these comments to edit my writing and refine it. Below are example comments that I received and an edit I made based on them.
These comments were helpful in learning what I could work on and change to take my writing to the next level. I was able to go back into my essay and tweak a few sentences and move some things around to make it clearer for the reader and also strengthen my claims.
“Joy is often a feeling that is hard to come by these days unless you are in the high rankings of society as there is so much depression and poverty throughout the world. We face a division in society through race, political status, and religion, among other things. Events like protests, prejudice in communities, law formation, and wars cause us to further divide, and it distracts many people from the current problems at hand like increased poverty, inflation, education disputes, immigration among other issues. We are so enveloped in fighting for our beliefs and home in on them so strongly that we don’t stop and make time for ourselves. Zadie Smith, Ross Gay, and others were helpful in helping develop my concerns and confidence in relation to joy. As a society we need to prioritize joy, be okay with the thought that it can happen even in the darkest of times, and that we need to get past our differences so that we can enjoy the benefit that joy has on our lives.”
With this paragraph there isn’t much that I changed as there weren’t to many comments left by my peer for review that suggested change in my draft for my essay. But one of the comments suggested mentioning the authors of the sources we used in the introduction and that is what I did. It is a slight change that briefly introduces the authors but helps the reader later on in my essay.
This just goes to show that even the slightest of changes can make a big impact in our writing. So looking through my peers comments I am able to become a better writer and a reviewer by getting inspiration from their comments. I am now not scared to leave beneficial editorial comments and have stopped trying to be sweet and suggestive at the same time. Instead kept them separate so it is easier to differentiate the type of comment. I now feel strongly that I can conduct a good peer review and can rewrite based of ones done to me.
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