Before this course, I only used peer review to look for sentence-level errors in others’ writing. This course introduced me to looking at the actual content of others’ writing rather than just the sentence flow and grammar. By following guidelines, I learned to identify different parts of their essay to make sure that they met all the necessary requirements. I was able to give them feedback on each of these parts and offer suggestions as to what should be added or removed.

In the screenshot above, you can see examples of how I conducted my peer review. I highlighted certain areas of the essay and categorized them (MA = main argument, E = evidence), then offered feedback on how to improve this area. This kind of feedback is more beneficial to the writer than my previous method of peer review would be, which just offered grammatical advice. In this course I have learned how to offer better feedback to my peers and essentially improve their work.