Reflection – Peer Review

Please read the entire post before responding.

Write a reflective essay that assesses your current skill in providing constructive feedback to your classmates during the revision process. Compare your current peer review practices to the relevant parts of the standards described in the Learning Outcomes Statement below.

Consider how well you use the Describe-Diagnose-Suggest formula to write lengthy comments, the degree to which you make concrete and specific suggestions that the writer can act on, and the tone with which you write your comments (generous, supportive and direct).

400 words or more.

Further expectations: Explain what you look for in a peer’s essay, the process you use to you construct your comments, and your own theory of the value of peer review.

I’m also expecting to see images (screenshots) of your comments alongside the relevant part of your peer’s paper.

Your screenshots could look something like this one:

LEARNING OUTCOME: Critique the Work of Others

Good peer reviewers help writers see their writing through the eyes of readers by writing thoughtful comments that address global concerns. They

• Paraphrase the meaning they have taken from writer’s words
• Focus first on the writer’s claims, evidence, and organization
• Make specific suggestions for change that
  • Sharpen the writer’s claims
  • Clarify his or her thinkingElaborate or challenge evidence
  • Lead to reworking entire sections of the paper
• Help a writer develop their thinking by
  • Pointing out the implications of the writer’s ideas
  • Offering suggestions for extending or redirecting the writer’s ideas
  • Suggesting different evidence or different interpretations of evidenceIndicating connections between the writer’s ideas and those of other writers.
  • Assessing the accuracy of a writer’s summary or paraphrase of another writer’s ideas
  • Giving voice to potential counter-arguments

Good reviewers do not act as proofreaders, but they do pay attention to local concerns that may limit the development of a writer’s ideas or impede the reader’s ability to understand the writer.
They comment on:

• The implications of a writer’s choice of words
• The clarity and precision of individual sentences or sentence-clusters
• Making clearer more explicit connections between linked sentences or ideas by using
  • Pivotal words (transitions)
  • Repeated words and phrases
  • Pointing words
• Connecting related ideas using complex or compound sentence structures
• Improving signaling of sources by
  • Using signal phrases
  • Choosing expressive signal verbs
  • Marking shifts in voice
  • Embedding voice markers to indicate writer’s view/use of source
• Stigmatizing grammatical errors that undermine a writer’s credibility and authority
• Whether the text meets formatting expectations