My Peer Reviews

Doing peer reviews on written works can be really helpful in making that essay, paper or book a lot better. When I did peer reviews in high school I focused on grammar more than anything else. I know for a fact I can't remember what any of those papers were about because my focus was only on grammar. Looking back at some of peer reviews to my classmates I have noticed a shift towards context, detail, and clarity. While reading a peer's paper I do still notice grammar a lot but I have noticed I do it less comparing the first paper, Literacy Inquiry and the second paper, Research Argumentative papers. There is also a noticeable difference in what I do make comments on. On the first paper I remember struggling to find areas in the writing that were confusing, had too little or too much detail. I think it was because it was my first peer review that focused on those aspects of writing. Also I felt like I shouldn't comment too much because it might annoy my peer. On both papers I tried to compliment things I thought were well written or that I agreed with. Doing peer reviews on the second paper was much easier. I realized that my comments were my opinion and it was up to the author to decide to use it or not. I commented on what was confusing to me and added suggestions to how to make it clearer. I also added suggestions on how to bring thoughts together and remove or add detail. I didn't just tell them what needed improvement but I feel like I complimented more on the second paper than the first. Also the things I specifically focused on the Literacy Inquiry was different than the Research Argument paper. The literacy paper was a memoir and I focused more on how clear the story that was being told was and how the reader was able to reflect on it and learn about literacy. The research paper was an academic paper arguing one side of any argument. I focused on how well the author was able to support their argument with facts but also putting their own thoughts in it. I also focused on how well it related back to their thesis and if the quotes they had were used to emphasize a point and they reflected on the quotes instead of just having them there. I have noticed how much easier it has been to peer review if you just write all your thoughts down that can strengthen the context, detail and clarity of your peer's paper.