Monday, December 1, 2008

Peer Review Final Post

All in all I would have to say that the most useful part of peer review is the chance for someone else to read your essay and see if they understand the point you are trying to get across. If I don't really understand what someone is saying, I will let them know. Also, if I get the point htey are trying to make, but it is a little confusing, I will let them know. I think the most difficult part of writing our essays in 328 is that we are supppose to write to an audience that has no idea of th eclass or anything we are doing. It is easier to write to an audience that has some background on what you are doing. Many times we assume that since we understand what we are writing, our audience will too.
As far as things not working in peer review, the quality of the comments given. I want and embrace comments, and I mean comments like what isn't working and what should be fixed or if something is wordy or confusing to understand. But it seems that many don't put the extra effort in. I'm sure we all want to believe that we wrote A papers without any editing, but we probably didn't. And giving comments back are our last chance between our own editing and grading.
The one thing that I have learned in peer review over the course of the semester is that not everyone wants or give honest comments or editing. I think that people don't want to hurt other people's feelings so they say it was great or good point even if it really wasn't or they really didn't read it. I remember one time in class we discussed a similar situation where someone felt like their comments were mean or rude. So basically I learned that honesty is the best to give true comments but you should say something positive too so the person dosn't feel like they are being dumped on.
I also found (well someone else found it and showed me) a really really cool tool on google docs. If you go under word count you can check the level of your writing on different scales. If you write for what grade audience, so on and so on. Very neat!

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