Overall I believe that my peer review has been strong throughout the semester and I never considered it to be overwhelming or stressful. I have had experience with peer review prior to this class, yet the one change for this course would be focusing on evidence, organization, and ideas opposed to local comments. Previously I viewed peer review and editing simply as grammatical changes to ones paper, which no longer was the case in this course. With this said, I struggled with not correcting superficial errors such as spelling at the beginning, regardless I completed the task with time. And I can definitely say that I have improved in efficiency throughout the semester. I can positively say that I comment on what is needed in ones paper, I don’t seem to favor one aspect, I write what I see fit. In the paper below I majorly focused on organization and ideas due to the evidence being strong and me trying not to rely on local comments. Local comments are important don’t get me wrong but I attempted to become a stronger peer editor this semester, and with that said I leaned away from easy quick fixes. Like Cripps said, the actual substance of the paper is much more rewarding to comment on. I also noticed that I tend to comment in a compliment sandwich, first I mention a positive aspect and then offer suggestions for improvements. I don’t simply state what is wrong, for example, in my peer’s second paper my first comment stated “Overall, this introduction and claim are very strong, especially since you pull from Gee’s words for support. I would try to mention the other texts that are going to be used as well”. I complimented the strength of the introduction in terms of organization yet mentioned a potential drawback that needs to be corrected. How she needs to introduce the other texts that with be used later in the essay. This compliment sandwich encourages growth due to it not being completely negative, which I believe the be extremely beneficial. One area that I should focus on improvement for the future would be complimenting on grammatical errors alongside evidence, organization, and ideas. It can’t hurt to point out what I see is wrong, this doesn’t mean to focus solely on that aspect as I have done before in the past, but to incorporate it as well. I tended to not make those types of comments throughout the semester because I wanted to alter my prior perception, yet I believe I should circle back.
