Description: 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.

While I had done the occasional peer review in high school, most, if not all, of the comments that my peers and I left were sentence-level revision. None of our teachers ever put much emphasis on what goes into a good review, so it was largely left to our own judgement to decide what sounded good and what didn’t. Even in my first peer review session in this course, I struggled with falling into correcting grammar or MLA formatting. As we continued with peer review, I got better at identifying and addressing global issues and tried to make my advice as specific as possible. This had the consequence of helping me to recognize when I had similar issues. The more I identified a specific area where global revision was needed in someone else’s work, the more I started to see where I struggled with a similar need in my own and was able to fix it. This has been one of the biggest benefits of peer review for me this semester. Whether you are leaving comments or receiving comments, both have some positive impact on your overall writing quality. I think by far the most helpful peer review to give or receive are the end comments. They are so useful because they draw all the points from the reviewer into a package that can be easily absorbed, which means that they are a fantastic jumping-off-point for revision. For the third essay, I tried to create an end comment that would allow my review partner to focus on global revision, while also emphasizing the best parts of his draft. I have included a picture of this end comment below.

End comment on third essay draft for Lawson Dunn

With this end comment I began by focusing on the elements of his draft that I liked, followed by the elements that required improvement. I tried to be very specific in the feedback I gave, especially when it came to increase in quote variety and a more connective thesis. I gave him a couple alternatives for how he could revise his thesis to be more cohesive, rather than seeming like two separate ideas. These are all things that I especially appreciate when I read my end comments, so I try to use them when I write in order to give the best feedback possible. However, for this last essay I didn’t find an end comment from my peer, which made it difficult at first to really delve into revision. One comment I did receive on my last essay that helped me was about bringing in more examples from my personal experience. I have included this comment below.

Dunn comment about bringing in more of my personal experiences

This comment helped to give me ideas for how to expand upon my perspective and show my connection with my grandfather that is relevant to understanding my emotional state after his passing. I liked this comment, but truthfully it was the only comment on the third essay that helped me revise in any way. Every other comment was vague or didn’t give me a lot to go off of. Although I didn’t receive much in the way of great peer review on the most recent essay, there were some really great comments left for me during the second round of peer review. Below is an end comment left for me from our second essay peer review session.

End comment on essay about empathy, Hoff

Thomas’ comment here really helped me to start the revision process. I put a lot of emphasis on bringing myself into the second essay, which I talk about in the first learning objective. Having an end comment that is specific and concise like this is like having a checklist for revision. It streamlines the whole process and gives something to look back at and see if I incorporated every piece of advice, and if not then it gives me a chance to reexamine why I chose not to use it. Comments like these are what made peer review such a useful tool for writing, and it’s one that I will continue to use whenever I get the chance.

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