Seeing Stars

Daily Assignment: Peer Review - An Explanation of Grades

It should go without saying that the two most important policies, common sense and courtesy, are key to succeeding in this assignment. You need both. You need not have a master's degree in English to tell whether a sentence makes sense, whether an essay "flows" smoothly, whether an author has supported a main idea with strong, definite examples.  What you do need is a willingness to focus thoughtfully on someone else's words and to offer comment on the writing skill demonstrated in the essay. You need NOT agree with their method of opening the essay; you need NOT agree with their opinion presented in the essay; you NEED to look only at the author's skill and ability to present his or her ideas directly, clearly, in an organized fashion, in strong, complete sentences. The ultimate goal in reviewing someone else's paper is to make you more aware of YOUR OWN PAPER.  Failure to respond carefully in peer review is failure to understand your own potential errors.

 






Your comments seemed thoughtful, conscientious, and, most of all, helpful to the writer. Whether he/she agree with your comments or not, the effort on your part in reviewing this paper could also be transferred to your paper as you proofread and revise. It seemed clear that you were concerned with the skill of the writing, whether you agreed or disagreed with the writer. Your effort demonstrates your seriousness to this class, and, if I were your peer, I would value your opinion.

 Your comments demonstrate effort and could be very helpful to the writer. You may not yet be accustomed to evaluating writing or you may be hesitant in offering comment, but your effort in reviewing someone else's paper will make you more aware of your own writing. Time may have run out before you finished your comments, but your skill as a critical reader should continue to improve, as long as you continue to read and respond critically, as you did in these comments. You did a good job. If I were your peer, I would be interested in what you would have to offer.

Your comments were considered and thoughtful, even though you might not have always been sure of yourself. You offered serious comment, worth the writer's time and worth the critical effort you put in. You need to continue to read and consider everything you read, whether written by a peer or a professional. Trust that you have the capability to determine if something is well written and that you can determine why it is or why it is not. This is difficult and will take practice, but will ultimately be worth your time, as it will begin to reflect better writing on YOUR part. You did pretty good with this peer review; I think, if I were your peer, I'd like to know what you think.

Perhaps time ran out on you; perhaps you did not feel competent in offering commentary on this paper; perhaps you were having a bad day. There could be a number of reasons or a number of excuses why your comments may not have been helpful to the writer. You can improve the quality of the comments you offer, if you invest more effort in the paper, even if the paper is not especially good. The point of offering commentary is not simply to help the writer, but to help yourself, as well. It is a challenge sometimes to read and review a paper, but as you analyze an essay, it gives you practice in what you could also look for in your own paper. Chances are you have more to offer than you realize, but it was not demonstrated on this review. You'll do better next time.

Looking over your comments revealed little effort and failed to demonstrate your engagement with this assignment. The writer will likely not be able to grow or develop his work or skill from the comments you did offer. One has to wonder if you would want a review as limited as this one seems to be.  This is a poor job on this assignment and the writer may have felt frustrated, as I likely would have, if this is the only feedback you could offer.