Throughout my English 110 course, I was instructed to complete three peer reviews for the three major essays assigned in the semester. Looking back to the begining of the semester, It’s clear that my peer review skills have come a long way, as my earlier peer reviews are far less complex than my latest peer reviews. In going back to really compare my earliest reviews to my latest reviews there are a few areas that I’ve noticed consistent improvement over time. Firstly, I noticed that in my first peer review I had a tendency to criticize the quality of my peer’s writing itself. Meaning, the strength of their sentences, grammatical errors, etc. While, as time went on and I gained some practice; I paid more attention to the strength of my peer’s argument in regards to their thesis and the prompt. As you can see in my second peer review blog entry, I criticize or compliment my peer’s statements and evidence, based on their relevance to their thesis and the overall prompt, while recommending additional sources and formating advise to take into account once they enter the revision stage. As someone who enjoys writing and has always been successful with assignments that require writing, I tend to rush right into offering ‘final polishing’ types of revision advice to help my peer word things in a way that sounds smooth and professional because that is what I have always been good at. With that being said, the peer review assignments required for English 110 has taught me that the most important part of an academic essay is the strength of the argument and the evidence used to support it. Even if an academic essay is well-worded, it is still considered weak if there is a lack of strong evidence, and that is what the multiple peer-review assignments this semester has taught me.
