During the peer reviews, I gradually got better at being able to help my peers revise their work. I started off struggling in the sense that I didn’t want anything to come off too harsh, which was also a topic of discussion when we met in class to review the comments made on each other’s essays. I struggled with finding areas that I thought they should improve on so I would settle for bland comments on their hooks or sentence structure. Throughout the semester I got better at recognizing areas that would need work. For example, if their thesis could be more complex, focused, or stronger by combining sentences or focusing on one overarching idea. I was able to recognize if their thesis sounded “list like” as they do in high school writing. I also got better at helping with the Barclay structure and noticing if someone needed to add some analysis about a quote or needed to focus their writing on the claim because they continuously went on tangents. My comments towards the end of the semester were much more sophisticated and helpful than they were when the semester started. When offering feedback in the class we focused and prioritized “global” revisions rather than “local” revisions. These global revisions referred to stronger and more helpful areas such as thesis work than the local revisions of grammar and sentence structure. This is undoubtedly an area of growth for me because I have managed to become much better with offering areas of corrections or reworking in my peers’ essays. I have been able to grow and will be able to continue to grow in this area.

Attached you will see an essay of a peer that I had peer edited during the semester. This work is what I believe to be my best work from our peer edits.