Peer Review

Peer review is very valuable to students no matter if they are in college or high school. Everyone wants feedback on their papers before they turn in the final draft so that they can write their papers to the best of their ability. Peer Review has been a writing process that I was taught since middle school. It has always helped me and I am really glad that we still Peer Review in college. It helps me to get a good first rough draft down a few days before the due date. Because whenever I don’t have peer review, I usually procrastinate and start my writing process the night before my paper is due. But when I have peer review in class, it gets me motivated to write a good rough draft so that I can get good feedback from my classmates.
If I was in charge of peer review class I would keep it pretty much how we have it now in our English class. I would set the peer review date one class before the due date so that once the students get peer review, they then act on it right away and change their papers. If we have peer review a week before the papers are due, students may be tempted to not improve their papers until the night before they are due. And if students do this, then the parts of the paper that they need to improve will not be fresh in their minds, and they might not correct their papers as well as they would have if they would have done it right after peer review.
So the class before the papers were due I would have everyone bring in a typed rough draft. It is important that the papers are typed for two reasons. If students write out their papers for peer review they could be hard to read, and therefore correct. Also they might not be the recommended length if the paper is typed, and then the students would have to add on a lot more after peer review. Also if students don’t print them out and just bring their computers to class for peer review, there might be computer problems and therefore students would have excuses for why their papers aren’t done. So it is best that students bring typed copies of their papers that are the correct length to make peer review successful.
I would also have a peer review worksheet for the students so that when it is going on they can write feedback to the writer about ways to improve their paper. On this worksheet there would be questions on the content of the paper to see if the paper stays on topic. There would be questions about the introduction and conclusion of the paper to make sure that they paper flows well together. There would be questions on the grammar and spelling so that the paper looks polished. And lastly there would be questions about the proof or examples in that paper that make it strong.
Peer Review is a very important process that needs to be done in all cases of writing. It really helps out the writer to make the paper the best it can be. It is important that the writer sufficiently tries on the rough draft so that the paper can get the correct feedback that it needs. Also a peer review sheet will help the entire process go more smoothly. Overall Peer Review is a very valuable part of writing.