Blog #5

My impressions on peer review…

I think peer review is helpful in the aspect that you are given the opinions of other students. It is interesting to see the interpretations that other students have. It is especially interesting reading other student’s essays who read the same two pieces of writing as I did, but interpreted them differently. I find it to my advantage when reading other students work and seeing different techniques that they use when analyzing text. I find it helpful to see how they were able to integrate quotes as well as explaining them.

I believe that everyone should live life constantly learning and trying new things. When reviewing other students work, I believe we are learning. We are learning their style of writing and learning about the techniques they use to write a strong essay and relay their ideas. Later on, it may be beneficial for the reader to try to use some of the techniques they learn through reading others’ papers and apply them to their own writing.

One thing that I find not beneficial is having someone make a wrong “corrections” to your essay. Especially in the beginning of the year when classes have just started and we have not yet written a paper, having someone else correcting you paper is scary. Just starting college, no one in our class has yet written a college essay for our professor. We do not know how the professor grades, and do not know what the professor is looking for. I find it helpful to start peer review after we receive feedback from what the professor is looking for on our first essay.