Throughout the semester my classmates and I were assigned to peer edit a partners first draft of different essays. Peer editing sessions offer a lot of benefits, the insight gained from the peer evaluations improved mine and many other students essays. We start the process of peer evaluating by sharing a google document with members of a small group or with a partner. Students are instructed to go through each others papers and look for local and global mistakes and comment ideas or correction in comment boxes in the margin of the document. Local revisions consist of punctuation, sentence structure, MLA and paper format and word choice. Global revisions consist of changes to ideas, quotes and explanations and paragraph organization. Using a coding exercise done in class students were instructed to review their own peer evaluations by going through the comments they left on a peers essay and number each comment and leave either a I, E, O, or L which represents ideas, evidence, organization and local. I reviewed a classmates essay #3 where I left a total of sixteen comments that consisted of all types of suggestions including a return letter to my peer. Most of my comments consist of complimenting the work that has been done and local revisions rather than global edits.
Compared to the first essay peer evaluation session I have improved many of my editing skills. In the first assignment most of my suggestions were one worded suggestion or consisted of quick tips rather than more in-depth suggestions. For example in a writing assignment of my classmates during the first couple days of the class I peer edited her work and left a total of four comments that consisted of “reword” twice and “take out the ()”. Looking back now, though these were local corrections, I can see that they were worthless and most likely did not add any insight for my peer. In essay #3 I made comments to suggest more global correction that recommended a change to evidence or organizational flow to the paper. For my fifth comment I suggested an idea about my peers paragraph formatting, “Maybe after you introduce each expert you could say how their ideas can directly effect climate change instead of just at the end.” In my eighth comment I left for my peer on her essay was an evidence and a local proposal. “This is a supportive quote! The punctuation after my friend needs to be changed there shouldn’t be a period after friend.” Comments like these were more informative and constructive for my peer. In my future assigned peer evaluations I hope that I will be able to offer more global and subjective comments throughout the entirety of their paper that could help my peers more. I have learned through this entire process that peer evaluations can help my writing very much and that is why it is so important that I had improved on my own peer evaluating skills.
Link to first writing assignment:
https://docs.google.com/a/une.edu/document/d/17E5pKgeL_x925sS6H2UhHAEAIEItmVr93BDk0em5ULI/edit?usp=sharing
Link to essay #3 peer review:
https://docs.google.com/a/une.edu/document/d/1hS5G_2I4L7_9Kz6_ufQcwKLnRJr_ygH2hMAw64riclc/edit?usp=sharing
