Peer Review : Giving Peer Feedback

Giving Peer Feedback

Peer editing groups offer a fun, effective way to develop your writing and revising skills – skills you will need throughout your college experience. Specifically, such groups give each writer a chance to write for an audience other than the professor, and when you know your peers will read your draft, you often think ahead about how you can interest your audience and explain your ideas clearly.

At first, some students find it difficult to say what they think about a piece of writing. Such difficulties arise when students feel uncomfortable commenting on someone else’s work, not wanting to call anything "wrong,” not feeling qualified to "judge" another 's work. Instead, some find it tempting to say "Looks fine to me," but your peers learn nothing from such feedback.

More than evaluations of right and wrong, effective peer editing requires you to act as an interested reader who wants to learn as much as possible from the essay. Your job, then, requires you to read closely, comment, question, and offer the kind of feedback you yourself would find interesting.

Start by telling the writer what you like and then point out places where you believe the writer was less effective. Remember to choose your language carefully. Rather than saying, "This makes no sense," try something like, "I wasn 't completely clear about what this sentence meant."

Further, try to avoid overly broad language ("It 's hard to understand) or vague language ("Your description here seems ok”) in favor of specific instances ("This list makes the procedure clear"; "I think you need to make this point more clearly"). The more specific your feedback, the more helpful it becomes.

Often, peer editing also builds confidence for writers feeling in...

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..., confusing, muddled, repetitive, or just plain boring, take the feedback as one person 's opinion. Accept it and see what you can do to correct it.

Feel free to decline. If you consider your peer editor 's advice and find it unhelpful, feel free to ignore it. Usually, though, if a reader suggests a problem, other readers would likely experience a similar problem. Taking a careful look will likely improve your writing.

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Adapted from the following sources:

Colby College. (2016). Peer Editing. Retrieved from http://www.colby.edu/writers.center/peerediting.html

Dawson, M. (2016). Writer 's Web: Peer Editing Guide. Retrieved from http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/peereditprint.html

Doyle, S. (2013). Guidelines for Peer Editing. Retrieved from http://web.uvic.ca/~sdoyle/E302/Notes/Peer editing.html