Peer Reviews
Introduction
After working so closely with a piece of writing, writers often need to step back and ask for a more objective reader. What writers most need is feedback from readers who can respond only to the words on the page. When they are ready, writers show their drafts to someone they respect and who can give an honest response about its strengths and weaknesses. Often, professors will set this up using specific worksheets or peer review directions that they have developed for each assignment. Follow those directions closely.
You, too, can ask a peer to read your draft when it is ready. After evaluating the feedback and assessing what is most helpful, the reader’s feedback will help you when you revise your draft. This process is called “peer review.”
You can work with a partner in your class and identify specific ways to strengthen each other’s essays. Although you may be uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, remember that each writer is working toward the same goal: a final draft that fits the audience and the purpose. Maintaining a positive attitude when providing feedback will put you and your partner at ease.
Participating in a Peer Review
Peer feedback is a practice where feedback is given by one student to another. Peer feedback is used in writing classes to provide students more opportunities to learn from each other. After students finish a writing assignment, the instructor has two (or more than two) students work together to check each other’s work and give comments to the peer partner. Comments from peers are called as peer feedback. Peer feedback can be in the form of corrections, opinions, suggestions, and ideas to each other. Thus, peer feedback is a two-way process in which one cooperates with the other.
Peer feedback is active learning that involves opportunities for students to write and read meaningfully and reflect on the content, ideas, issues, and concerns of an academic subject. Peer feedback can be defined as a communication process through which learners enter into dialogues related to performance and standards. However, peers are not supposed to ‘critique’ each other but listen for missing details, description, ask questions about parts that are confusing, and praise what they enjoyed. Peer feedback may be referred to by many terms such as peer evaluation, peer critiquing, peer editing, or peer response. Also, peer feedback enhances the education process which is an important dominant tool because it is regarded as a social activity. Some researchers consider peer feedback as an effective technique for the development of the students’ writing and prefer instructor feedback to peer feedback. However, according to Wakabayashi (2013), he agrees that peer feedback is useful because of the cognitive, and social benefits of peer feedback, especially in writing classes.
According to Atay and Kurt, there are effects on adopting peer feedback in class. First, it provides diversity with teaching compared with the traditional way of giving teacher feedback. In peer feedback sessions, students do not just listen to teacher’ instructions, but work with their peers to do more practices in writing. In this case, students’ anxiety becomes lower and learning motivation can be higher.
Second, sharing opinions with peers is helpful in building and increasing one’s confidence. Clearly expressing what one is trying to say requires confidence and sufficient knowledge; people need to clarify what to say with their own knowledge or experiences. Thus, giving useful feedback definitely strengthens one’s confidence. Moreover, peer feedback helps student to take more responsibilities in learning process. Besides doing assignments, students have to read others’ work carefully as well so that one is not only responsible for his/her own work but also the others’.
When peer feedback is established it allows students to interact with their peers and creates high social skills while learning material more effectively. Interaction with other students allows students to have better social approaches when interacting. Learning by peer feedback gives students more of an opportunity to work as a unit instead of individuals working alone. Working in small groups gives students more useful life skill that well help prepare them for the future. Peer feedback gives more control to the student, the student can decide if they want to use the criticism their peers are giving them or not. When given options, more students are more likely to give and absorb and apply more feedback.
Summary
Peer feedback can come in the form of comments, questions, corrections, and/or suggestions. Participating in a peer review assignment will give you the opportunity to review your peer’s work and provide thoughtful ideas for improvement. In turn, the comments your peers give you will provide another lens of feedback for enhancing your own writing. Having a combination of instructor and peer feedback will give you the best opportunity to look for areas of improvement before submitting a final draft.
Sources:
“Completing a Peer Review.” By GSU Perimeter College. Retrieved from: http://gsuideas.org/SCC/Revising/Completing%20a%20Peer%20Review.html Licensed under: CC-BY
“What is PEER FEEDBACK? What does PEER FEEDBACK mean? PEER FEEDBACK meaning & explanation.” By The Audiopedia. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5IMvOsqwZw Licensed under: CC-BY. Adapted by The American Women’s College.
