Peer Editing
Peer editing is an opportunity for you to improve your paper (and your grade), to help others improve theirs, and to develop your skills in editing papers – and thus develop your skills in writing. Because of this, I take peer editing very seriously – and you should too.
In order to make the most of this process, two things are essential
- Submitting them on time. On the first meeting of the week, students share their papers with those in the peer editing group. These are due before class that day, in order to give you sufficient time to read the papers before the next class. In order to make sure this is happening, you need to send me a copy of the first draft at the same time you send it to your peers. This way I can see that you have shared the draft on time.
- Complete drafts: The first draft of the paper is NOT a rough draft. It is a complete and polished draft that you would normally hand in. Peer editing a complete and polished draft will enable you to further improve your paper and get a better grade.
Peer editing is a two-step process. The first is to write comments on your peers’ papers (this is part of your homework between a Monday and Wednesday meetings or Tuesday and Thursday class meetings). The second is to discuss the papers and the comments in class.
1. Written comments (homework between class meetings Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday)
- make comments both in the margin as you read it, AND a statement at the end that summarizes what worked well in the paper and what could be improved
- in your comments in the margin, make both personal response comments (“this paragraph is really compelling” or “I lost your train of thought here”) and criteria based comments (“your argument here has strong support” or “this paragraph drifts from one topic to another”). For criteria, see “Barnhill’s Friendly Manual for Great Papers”: www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/barnhill/Writing/manual.html.
2. Class discussion of the papers (Wednesday or Thursday)
- Peer editing groups meet to discuss ways of improving the papers, using the comments as a starting point.
- This discussion is also a time for students to deepen their understanding of the issues in the papers. It is both a time for peer editing and for probing the ideas and issues.
When done well, when students take it seriously and do their work conscientiously, peer editing is a highly valuable experience. When students don’t take it seriously, it is an annoying waste of time. I will get two types of feedback that will help me track who on the quality of the peer editing.
- You will turn in the peer edited copies of the papers, so I can see what comments have been made. Be sure to put the name of the peer editor at the top of the first page.
- You will grade your peer editors, in terms of quantity and quality of suggestions and in terms of written and oral (in-class) comments.
The two most frequent criticisms of peer editors are (1) not enough comments and (2) too nice—not critical enough. Be sure to give your peers a lot of constructive criticism.
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