Blog Post 3

       This week, we learned how to construct a quality peer review. A peer review is when you work with someone your own age to help improve, revise, and edit his or her own writing. In effort to become a pro peer editor I watched, read, and viewed many different sources and learned a great deal from all.

       First, I read Paige Ellis' Blog Assignment #12 . Ms. Ellis addressed one reason I have always disliked peer editing, which is that critiquing someone’s work is not always appreciated. However, we are part of a learning community and we need to help each other along the way!Her blog post was insightful and an amazing source, especially since this opinion on peer review came from someone my age.

       I then proceeded to watch What is Peer Editing? and view the slideshow Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial, to really understand how to create a quality peer review. Both sources tell of three steps that help achieve this goal: compliment, suggest, and correct. This helped me tremendously. I had no idea where to begin with peer editing and this help me out!

       Peer reviews should always start with a compliment. Tell the author what you like about the paper, before you start to tell them what they should change. Next, you should make specific suggestions on how to make the writing better. You should make suggestions on several items. Word choice- did the author choose interesting words? Using details- did the author describe things thoroughly? Organization- can you understand the flow? Sentences- are there any run-ons or fragments? Topic- does the author stay on topic? The final step is to make corrections. You should check your peer’s work for mistakes in punctuation, grammar, and spelling. You should always remember to stay positive in your critiques!

       The last source I watched was the comical video, Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes. Over the years, I have come across some Mean Margaret’s, Pushy Pauly’s, and Jean the Generalizer’s. I appreciate the helping hand that peer reviews give, but when you hear only negative reviews, people telling you how to write YOUR paper, or people criticizing your paper, but not telling you how to make it better, it makes you cringe at the words “peer editing”! That is why I love the idea of this video; it lets people know what is not acceptable while trying to peer review, in a funny way!

       From now on, I think I will be able to be very helpful to my fellow peers. Also, after this week I no longer cringe at the thought of a peer review. I will probably switch between emailing and posting on my peer's blog when I do a peer review. If I feel like my peer had a crazy amount of errors, I will email them; otherwise, I will post directly on their blog.