My Progress:
In high school, peer review was always about grammar. I would never read a peer’s paper with intentions of arguing or supporting their ideas, or even commenting on them at all. When I reached college, that all changed. Peer review shifted from grammar to ideas, and evidence. I no longer mark up someone’s paper with “insert a comma here”, or “double check spelling.” When I am reading a peer’s paper, I am more concerned about the quality of their writing, and the connections between their ideas and their evidence. Most of my comments are about how my peer could improve on the organization of their paper, or how to better represent their ideas through different quotes, or the placement of their quotes. In some instances, I will tell my peer to either go more in depth with their evidence, or I will point out that their is far too much summarization going on and that it might be taking away from their point. Overall, I think I have improved a ton on what to focus on during peer review in order to make sure my peer gets the most out of it. We also have focused on peer review in class where we work with student’s paragraphs, and review them as a whole class. I have found this to be incredibly helpful to me. Not only do you get to hear everyone else’s ideas on how to improve, but you also (hopefully) can attribute those same ideas to your own paper. That has been incredibly helpful for me when I am trying to review my paper. I often jot down notes in class about someone else’s revisions to their paragraph that I can also use to revise mine.
