Marginal Comments
“…your first paragraph is very strong in the areas of reference to your authors and a piece of brief but concise background information, but taking these thoughts and developing a bold thesis statement pushing your own voice would be really helpful in driving your paper!”
“Good summary of the work, maybe tie your own ideas into the end of this paragraph as/or after the analysis of the quote. It would strengthen it a lot and you could use the text in your thinking.”
End Comment
“Really nice paper you have going here! You have good use of quotes and quote sandwiches to support your idea. I believe this idea is that both essays written by the 2 authors bring up some valid points but in the end, you lean more towards Chen’s POV. I got this by piecing textual clues you provided together and from the last paragraph. I think this is where bringing your own personal voice into your introduction would be very beneficial, that way the reader would know 100% what you are trying to emphasize. I really liked your second paragraph in particular. It was where I noticed most of your own voice in the paper and gave me some background knowledge to see social media through your eyes. One idea of where you could possibly strengthen your paper is to think a little more deeply on both topics and how they can intertwine with one another, places where they contradict one another or where they are coming from a similar way of thinking. This could also help you make a thesis to push your own views in your intro. My other biggest way I think you could add a little something to finalize your draft is making sure the beginning of your paragraphs bring a little more of your perspective to introduce the paragraph rather than a summary, but other than that your structure flows well and everything looks like it’s coming along well!”
Peer review is a tool that I find extremely beneficial in the writing process. It allows me to strengthen my ideas and push me to think about concepts the way that others around me see them. I try to give good, helpful peer review when it comes to looking at other people’s papers. When I review a peer’s paper, I read it over once or twice to really try and analyze what the big idea they’re trying to push, then I go to applying these bigger picture ideas across the entire paper. I noticed that my marginal comments tended to talk about expanding off an idea that the writer had introduced but not gone into clarification as to what they personally are trying to emphasize there. My end comment took the paper as a whole and broke it down a little, positive feedback as to what the writer did really well and then areas where they could strengthen their writing. I like the concept of an end comment, it is a compact of all the writers’ ideas in one spot. If I didn’t really understand something that someone was peer-reviewing my paper was referencing, I can always look to the end comment to get an overview of the strengths and weaknesses in my piece of writing.
