Peer review is a really crucial part of the writing process that I never took seriously in high school. Since teachers at my school never offered any guidelines as to how to properly peer edit, I never thought to comment on my peers’ ideas; I would spend my time peer reviewing focusing my attention on sentence-level errors. In Ben’s paper, I did my best to offer help not only grammatically, but also organizationally. I think I did a good job recommending better sentence placement (such as when I recommended he move a sentence to better explain a quote) and I did my best to offer help that would make the essay flow better, and resemble Barclay’s Formula paragraph. I do wish I had been more helpful in contributing to ideas. I didn’t offer him any specific quotes or passages that may boost his claim, which would have been nice. I did try to make it clear when I thought he did a good job (such as his claim in the first paragraph) while being honest when I thought something needed more explaining (such as his Alexander quote in the 2nd paragraph). My main takeaway from peer editing thoughout this course is that the most thoughtful peer review is oftentimes the most critical- peer review helps the most when it’s honest and full of suggestions. I definitely think I grew as a peer reviewer, and I understand the importance of it now.

Peer Review