Emily Poole

Kathleen Shirley’s Peer Review

Kathleen has written about her service trip to Jamaica. It is very coherent and although she has

not finished writing about the trip, she has a very strong introduction and in detail describes

her anxiousness for the trip.

Three things that are working in this essay

1. The dialogue is a great way to start, it is cool and interesting and grabs the readers

attention.

2. The description is very vivid, and I feel like I am there with her on the service trip.

3. I enjoy the longer introduction (structure) because it builds up the excitement to the trip

and all she has to talk about it.

Three things that aren’t working

1. There are many short abrupt sentences, you could try and lengthen them to really

achieve the full effect and detail of the essay

2. You can lessen the amount of time you say “I”.

3. Try showing us the story more rather than just telling us, think about taking the reading

along the journey of the mission trip instead of just telling us what happened.

Two suggestions for revision:

I would suggest the author to go into more detail of the actual mission trip rather than just the

anticipation building up to it. Again, I would suggest taking us along for the ride and show us

what it was like in Jamaica. Given that Kathleen has not entirely finished his essay, I would also
suggest that the ending might describe to us the impact the service trip had on her life, and

what she has maybe done in her life after the trip, in light of what she has learned.

Charlie’s Peer Review

Charlies has written about his experience at a low in the summer. He talks about his experience

of his friend and him running into a garage door of his friend’s house. He talks about his regret

and how it has changed his perspective and made him grow as a person

Three things that are working in the essay

1. Love the introduction paragraph, Charlie talks about how freshmen year can impact you

and gives a hint as to how it affected him.

2. I love the personal aspect of the essay; Charlie really dives into a personal experience

that has changed his life in many ways. You really get a sense of who he is and what he

has come from.

3. I really enjoy the way he separated and organized his paragraphs; it works really well

and keeps the story flowing.

Three things that aren’t working

1. There is a lot of grammar and punctuation errors. I would suggest using spell check and

go through sentence by sentence to correct it.

2. The conclusion ends abruptly and there could be more to add about how the church

camp went, and what he learned from it.

 3. I would suggest showing us rather than tell us what happened. Really show us how you

felt you stole the car, how you hit an all-time low and what happened as a result of it

Two suggestions for revision

I would suggest elaborating more on the actual night of the accident. Go into depth about what

happened, how you felt, and what you did as a result of it. I would also suggest telling the

reader how your life has changed since then and what you have done to grow and improve

since then. Given that the essay is not fully written, I would say to elaborate on the conclusion

more and not leave the author hanging with an abrupt ending.