In high school peer review was not an extremely lengthy process, especially if I was reviewing a classmate’s paper, especially if I was assigned to review that person’s paper and I did not know them personally. If one of my friends asked me to read over their paper I could informally tell them my critiques rather than have to go through a structured peer revision class exercise. Informally reviewing a friend’s paper allowed me to have less of a filter in my criticism as well as allowed me to be more open ended with my comments, which, from what I have been told has been very helpful. In high school we were told to look for errors in the way sentences or paragraphs were structured. We were also told to look out for areas in the paper that did not flow correctly grammatically or could have been worded more effectively. The peer editor was responsible for formatting errors pertaining to how quotations were integrated and were responsible for judging whether or not a paragraph was too long. These revisions were helpful, but ultimately, I would have hoped to gain insight from another person as to what ideas they thought could have been implemented into my essay. This would have been helpful because we both have read the same texts and are writing the same essay allowing them to be able to provide insight as to what they could add to my paper in terms of other useful examples from what we were assigned to analyze.

English 110 truly opened my eyes as to how I can be a more effective peer editor. When I was assigned to assist in editing the essays of two of my classmates using the Global Workshop guidelines I discovered that I could suggest how to further support an argument the author made with one of the sources read for class. I could work on this area by suggesting more relevant or stronger arguments that relate to their essay from the sources more frequently. Providing feedback about the essay as an overall product, commenting on the thesis, the strength of the analysis of the sources and the effectiveness of the introduction or conclusion paragraphs. Below I included a screenshot of the work I did to critique a classmates essay. I commented on the student’s thesis to assure them that their argument was clear and would be effective throughout the entire essay. I suggested an idea from Sanderson because I believed it would make their essay and argument stronger for that specific paragraph. Finally, I went through and alerted the author of any sentences in which the wording was unclear or areas where the spelling may have been flawed enough to impede the readers understanding.