I will never forget my senior year of high school and literature class. Mr. Butler's AP literature class kicked my butt! It seemed like every week we had to write a paper about something Shakespeare said or a poem I did not completely understand. I hated it! The worst part was all the red covering my papers once they were returned. My papers were always covered with red slashes, arrows, double underlined words and question marks. Everyone knew I was an awful writer based on all the red bleeding through my white paper. Maybe I would have felt better if Mr. Butler used a pink or purple pen. Maybe. I certainly would have grown as a writer if he would have taken the suggestions in What Is Peer Editing? and Peer Editing With Perfection Tutorial.
Peer Editing is a skill that requires practice. It is not a complicated task if the reviewer provides compliments about the work, offers suggestions to the errors found in the material being reviewed and shows the exact items needing corrections. Bringing someone's errors or omissions to light can feel awkward, but the process of peer reviewing is not an emotional decision. Both parties need to keep their feelings out of the equation and focus on ways to become better, more concise and articulate writers. I wish Mr. Butler would have given me suggestions on how to better describe situations or how to give more detail that supported my thesis. It would have given me more confidence to have him tell me something I had written that was correct, good or from a different perspective before he told me my mistakes. He was my teacher, not my peer, but the principles are the same. First, encourage. Second, suggest. Third, point out mistakes. Finally, do not invite your feelings.
Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes is a helpfully funny nuts and bolts guide to peer reviews.
Great job!
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