Anthony Edgington
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
There may be no writing classroom activity that garners such intense reactions as peer review. For some, peer review is seen as a positive, enthusiastic experience, one where students gain feedback on their essays that lead to robust revisions and extended development of the student as writer. However, in other cases, student and instructor responses to peer review are more negative, frustrating, and, at times, devastating. These comments frequently depict peer review as a waste of time or, in the direst of situations, as an event that has detrimental effects on writing and writer identity. In a survey of over 1,000 students, Charlotte Brammer and Mary Rees found that most students argued peer review was “not very helpful”; the authors further found “we have much work to do in helping students understand what peer review is (collaborative learning), and, more pointedly, what it isn’t (proofreading)” (79). And Linda Fernsten notes the problems that can arise when peer review involves members from different racial and/or cultural backgrounds, writing that “when one’s language is substantially different from what is familiar to peer responders or if writers perceive themselves to be socially or culturally distanced from their responding peers, the process can be nightmarish” (38). For several years, I have heard similar comments from my writing students. As I have encountered these comments, I’ve noted a consistent trend: the writer’s role in helping to generate feedback was almost never addressed. Writers lamented the fact that their peers were frequently not productive or resistant to discussion and hypothesized that if they were with a different group of students or were just allowed to revise on their own, then their writing would be substantially better. It was apparent that writers rarely became or were encouraged to become an active part of the review session, in essence becoming a background actor during the process. Part of this reason may be due to the writer feeling uncomfortable with or resistance towards becoming more involved. But I also believe this stems from the fact that writers were rarely presented with an opportunity to be more active. Writers were not encouraged to be more involved while peers were reading their texts, nor was there any encouragement to ask questions or seek clarification from reviewers on their comments (written or verbal). Thus, writers were a silent member of peer review; ironically, the person with the most to gain from the situation was the least involved in the activity. To encourage writers to be more active members of peer review sessions, I incorporated a new activity into the process: The Writer’s Worksheet. Unlike previously used peer review worksheets (which asked reviewers to write down responses and did not encourage discussion), the Writer’s Worksheet encourages the writer to be the most active member of the session. After a brief overview of the preparation students received for peer review, this article explains this activity and provides examples of the positive transformation in student writing and peer review in my writing classrooms.