Throughout the three peer reviews we did within the semester, I learned a lot about myself. In the first peer review I found myself focusing on more local concerns, such as grammar and sentence structure. When reviewing my first peer reviews, I found a majority of my comments are based around these local ideas. However, as we began to do more peer review and I became more comfortable with the idea, I focused more on the global concerns, such as organization, structure, or thesis. By focusing on these larger ideas first, and then later reviewing more local things like grammar and spelling, I can better help the writer throughout the major drafting of their essay.
This can be seen through my peer review session with Ryan Christenson, in his essay on the evolution of food (Link In Green Above). Taking a look at my comments on this essay, it can be see that I try and make 2-3 comments for each paragraph. Two of these usually refer to specific things, or raise question over something. The third, however, usually either brings up a possible idea to either improve or add a new idea. For example, in comments 7-10, I mention things such as “However, you should consider expanding on this. Use a quote to show what you mean. Reference her show, her values, and why they were important.” and “Consider referring to Soylent”. Both of these comments are more focus on global concerns, rather than just sentence level ideas. By giving the author a sense of where I would place a certain quote allows them to see what the reader sees, and to have the essay make more sense. In this essay, Ryan struggled with the overall structure, so I focus my global comments on where I thought certain quotes should go, and where other pieces fit in. He already had some ideas for quotes so I didn’t reference an exact example when I said “Consider referring to Soylent”, but when we talked I showed him how the quote he selected would fit into my comment.
While I do feel that this peer review went well, and I improved greatly from my first one where I made comments such as “Re Read to yourself and look at the grammar, good introduction of source”, I feel as I have a lot of room for improvement. I really began to get the hang of focusing on those important global ideas. However, I never got 100% comfortable with citing exact quotes for the writer to use. Finding relevant quotes for myself, nevermind others, to use has always been a weakness of mine, and I truly found that out throughout this process. That is something I am going to continue to have to develop as I progress through my academic career.
