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.
At the beginning of the semester, we were asked what peer-review looked like before coming to college and the response was practically unanimous: sentence-level revision, crossing the t’s dotting the I’s that were missed, commas here and there. It was seen as a waste of time and something to rush through to get a quick five-point grade. ENG 110 has taken that idea of peer review for me and changed it completely. Peer review has become a critical part of my writing process. Without feedback from at least a few people, I always get stuck with my writing and can never bring it as far as I want to. Peer review has become so much more than keeping my eyes open for just sentence level review. Learning about the significance of global revision has changed the way I write papers myself, and how I go about reading others’ work. Approaching peer revision with the task of global revision first is key for me. Usually, when revising a peer’s work I go through and read the piece to get a hold on their ideas. My next step is to go through again and give honest, clear feedback on sections I feel are working as well as sections that may need some work. After they’ve gone through to work on their writing, I then will double-check sentence level work such as clunky sentences, grammar, and spelling.
Here is an example of a comment I made on a peer’s paper before being totally comfortable making global revision suggestions. The ideas for global revision are here, but I did not explain my suggestion as well as I should have.
“Your voice and own personal ideas are almost seen here, push this idea by explaining a little more.”
I have always been nervous to give honest feedback in peer-review. My way of looking at peer-review with this fear is something I have been able to change over the course of the semester. ENG 110 has provided me with an environment where constructive criticism is something that is just that constructive. The feedback I have received from peers on how to better my papers, include my voice, and the placement of my ideas is something that has strengthened my work tremendously. This has helped me improve my comments on other’s work as well as my own, and my way of giving feedback is much more helpful to the writer now.
This is a comment I made on a peer’s essay where I fleshed out what I was trying to get at much better. I made comments on parts of the section that were working well with their message, but I took it a step further when making suggestions as to how they could strengthen their message.
“It was where I noticed the 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. “
