Peer review is a great start to learning how to revise a writing draft. While writing there is going to be multiple drafts written, which come from looking back at the piece and revising parts that do not make sense or could be better if they were placed in a different part of the essay. Often it can be hard for writers to be critical of their own writing because they put so much time and effort into writing it; this is where peer review comes in and is useful. Peer review is a great option when writing because it allows for a fresh set of eyes to look over your writing. Often if the person does not have any prior knowledge about your topic this will allow for them to pick out places where there needs more clarification. It can be easy to forget that not every person who reads your essay is not going to be an expert on the subject, and the essay will need to be dumbed down a little. I offered this advice during one peer review from an essay about how art can be used to understand a person’s sex outside the gender binary. In one part the author wrote about how some of the confusion towards sex could be because of the government. I feel like she sort of explained her evidence towards this, but I would have liked to have had a little bit more in depth explanation. I also pointed out the times where I thought she did very well at explaining something or the different resources that she used for evidence. Peer review can also be a good way to get help to find evidence that maybe you could not find beforehand. An example of this could be asking for examples of quotes that you could use or further topics that could be talked about. I also provided the person I peer reviewed with this. She wanted to use a quote from a certain text, but she could not find a quote to use. I had also read the paper that she wanted to use, and I provided her with an example from that text that would make sense with her essay. I do think I have improved a little on peer review over the semester, but I still think that I need to improve. Though I did add comments that were not just “it was good,” or “I liked this part,” I would like to be able to be able to go more in depth in my observations and be able to provide more help than what I did.
