Reflect on a time you have engaged in a peer-review. What is something positive you gained from it?

What
didn’t go as well as you would have liked? How does that experience shape your perception of the peer-review
activities in this class?

Throughout my middle-school and high-school I had many experiences with peer review in different
classes such as english, spanish, and history. Most of these experiences did not bring positive results. This was
because most of the kids in my classes have always been so focused on getting their work done rather than trying to
do quality work. There have been one or two times that I have gotten a little bit of positive results from some peer
review. This was for the most part because whoever was peer reviewing my work could not understand what my
point or argument was. While I did not gain a ton of useful feedback from the peer review it did teach me that I may
need to be a little bit more concise with my arguments and be less broad and chaotic in my writing. These one or
two events did help me since the readers did what Straub said to do and were[‘there to play back to the writer how
you read the paper.”(84) These experiences happened most times in history class because we would all have
different topics and events, so whoever was peer reviewing my work had trouble following along partly due to their
lack of knowledge on the topic I was writing about. It is because of these experiences that I am not sure whether
peer reviewing is that useful. If I had gotten useful feedback on my writings, I may have a more positive look on
peer review than I do now since I have not gotten much useful feedback from it.

What are your insights into responding to other student’s work? What has worked for you? What do you
wish people would do, or not do, when they respond to your writing? What would make you most inclined to
listen to responses and use them to change your work?

When it comes to reviewing other people’s works, I often have trouble finding flaws in the writings. This is
mostly because I have a mindset where if I understand the point, I don’t really care how it was conveyed to me.
There have been times where I have gotten relatively bad papers to review and couldn’t find much wrong with them
since I still understood the point. When it comes to other people reviewing my work, I wish that they would focus
more on the broader issues rather than focusing on the details. There have been to many times that people just focus
on the grammar and spelling issues more than the flaws in the arguments and inconsistencies in the writing. In
addition, they focus more on the flaws in the paper rather than the benefits and according to Straub “challenge
yourself to write as many praise comments as criticisims.”(87) Another issue I have found with peer review projects
is being able to take their advice. Too many times people that I do not think are good at writing will review my work
and it is then hard for me to take it since I know the source it came from.