Improving Peer Review ENGL 1102

Based on what you told me in Thursdays warm-ups, here are my suggestions:

Ingram S14

1. You cant improve your writing unless you talk about it, work with it, play with it, explore with it. Part of
this working and playing and exploring is REVISION. Revision means re-seeing, re-writing, adding,
subtracting, re-wording, and re-organizing. It means looking at content, organization, and purpose and
figuring out if your draft is as effective as possible. Part of that effectiveness is editing, but revision comes
firstbecause editing can be saved for later when you are sure youve said everything you want to say in
the way you want to say it.
2. We need to shift our understanding of the GOALS of peer review.
The goals are not to
FIX,
CHANGE,
FIND WHATS WRONG WITH,
or EDIT another writers draft.

The goals are to

READ,
DISCUSS,
BRAINSTORM,
BOUNCE IDEAS OFF EACH OTHER,
HAVE A DIALOGUE,
OFFER SUGGESTIONS, and
LEAVE WITH IDEAS.
This writing class is couched in participationist theory, which says that we make knowledge by
participating in its making through reading, writing, and talking to others. So, my suggestion is to TALK
with each other as much as you can during small group workshops. The *focus questions* I give you can
generate lots of discussion.
3. After you engage in peer review and you get home to work on your draft on your own, it is up to you
and only you to revise your paper based on what youve learned in peer review. Remember, its not your
group members responsibility to FIX, CHANGE, FIND WHATS WRONG WITH or EDIT your paper for
you. Thats your responsibility to figure all that out after your peer readers tell you about their experience
with your draft. Your question to yourself should be, Based on everything my group-mates said, what
changes can I make in order to make this draft better?
4. Writing exists in social contextsmeaning that its written, with a purpose, for particular readers. As a
writer, then, you have to pay attention to how your writing is being received by those readers. Remember,
though, that every piece of feedback given to you is up for debate. Every single comment. Its up to you,
the writer, to distinguish helpful comments from unhelpful ones and to make good decisions about your
drafts with the ultimate goal in mind of making your draft better: more powerful, more purposeful, more
easily received by your readers. And, bringing us full circle to the top of the page: you cant do any of that
without working, playing and exploring through revision. The more revision you do, the more youll learn,
the more youll have to write about in your final e-Portfolio.
Talking About Writing Word/Phrase Bank:

Parts of the writing:

Describing the writing:
Whos
involved:
sentence
useful
writer/author/creator/designer
paragraph
thoughtful
flowery
reader/audience
passage
informative
clean
poetic
quote
powerful
effective
What writers do:
block quote
relatable
interesting
synthesize,
combine
topic sentence
detailed
powerful
narrate
concluding sentence
tone
mood
colloquial
summarize
introduction
unclear
muddy wordy
re-order,
restructure, reconclusion
bland
lacking
organize,
move stuff
body
fluid/fluidity
expand
title
purpose/purposeful
condense
heading
How the writing works:
edit, polish
subheading
ethos appeal to ethos ethical appeal
explain
details/specifics
pathos appeal to pathos pathetic appeal add
sensory details
logos appeal to logos logical appeal
subtract/omit
thesis
kairos
syntax
linguistic mode - linguistically
diction
spatial mode - spatially
aural mode - aurally
visual mode - visually
gestural mode
Starter Phrases:
I liked this because
I was confused here because
This passage made me feel.
This part made me think about
I question you here because
I wonder if