Looking back on the peer review suggestions that I made on my peer’s paper earlier in the term compared to more recently have improved. Earlier in term my comments in peer review were much more generalized and vague than they have become as the course progressed. In the beginning I don’t think that I fully understood how to make productive suggestions on someone else’s writing based on the content and not just based off of grammatical or formatting errors and mistakes.
After receiving meaningful comments on my own writing it helped me to realize how helpful comments regarding the content of the paper can be when revising and attempting to write a final draft. I think that one of the reason’s why my peer review was much weaker towards the beginning of the term was because peer review wasn’t not done as often in high school or in the same fashion as we were taught to do it in this class. In high school peer review consisted primarily of grammatical and vague content suggestions or comments, I almost never offered my insight or suggested that the author at more evidence when peer reviewing in high school. As we discussed peer review more in depth in class I began to develop a better understanding of how to do properly do peer review. I began to leave more thoughtful and in depth comments on my peer’s writing which hopefully were more helpful than my earlier comments were when revising their papers.
Another reason that I think my peer review skills increased as the semester went on is because my active reading skills as increased as the semester went on. Active reading was something that I did not take as seriously in the beginning as I do now. Being able to read a piece of writing and make insightful and thoughtful comments was something that I got better with as time went on, I think that these active reading skills directly affected my ability to be a better peer reviewer.
