I am writing about this topic because in my CTW class, we have done a lot of peer reviews and I LOVE them. Peer review is so incredibly helpful because it gets a fresh set of eyes on my paper, so that people can catch mistakes that I’ve made or tell me when some parts of my paper don’t make any sense. For example, last quarter I brought my paper to peer review, and realized that I wrote it completely differently than anyone else, and that my way was wrong.
At the same time though, it can be a little intimidating to have your classmates look at your paper and critique it. I remember that my first time partaking in peer review in this class was nerve wracking. I had never really done peer review in high school and was not used to people other than my teacher look at my work. During my first peer review session, one person was a little too nice to my paper and did not really give me constructive feedback, but the other person really ripped my paper to shreds. This made me feel sad and embarrassed by my paper, because I did not even think that the things that he critiqued were problems.
However, as time went on, I like to think that my class got really good at peer review. They were no longer “too nice” or “too mean”, but rather, just right. They really were able to provide me with constructive criticism, while still complimenting me on what I did well. This allowed me to feel really good about my paper, which then motivated me to do even better and work on correcting it. Even more than that, these peer review days force me to really sit down and have other people evaluate my work. Like I’ve mentioned before, having other people look over my paper is really beneficial, but would probably not happened unless days like these peer review ones happened. I normally feel bad asking my friends to read over my papers because they’re usually relatively long and no one wants to read a long paper, so I like that my teacher forces them to do so.
I found an article that explains how to effectively peer review another person’s paper that I found very helpful. It is important to always remember that when peer reviewing, you are looking at a paper that someone probably spent hours on, so it is important to be respectful yet helpful when giving them feedback. Peer review is an extremely helpful practice, as long as it is done correctly, and can be the difference between an “okay” paper and a GREAT paper.
Image:
Image 1: https://www.clickworker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/peer.jpg
Image 2: http://jasonya.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Reviewer3Attack.jpg
Image 3: http://mybioscience.org/files/2013/05/peer-review-matters-e1392488210398.png