When I first began peer reviewing for English 110, I had no idea what global revisions were in terms of peer editing. I have always been the type to focus mainly on surface level errors and have learned that they are the least effective peer reviews. For example, in my first peer review for this class on the Grades Essay, I commented on Anthony’s paper with short suggestions such as “good inclusion of quotes!”, “good supplementary evidence!”, or “delete this”. These comments are ineffective as they provide no benefit to the author except reassurance for their choice of evidence or quotes, in addition to grammatical and sentence level errors. The bigger picture was still lacking and I had not really given any genuine feedback on the content of the essay. Through my development in peer review, I can say that I have shifted more from what is there to WHY a certain piece of text is included where it is and why/why not it should/should not belong there. For example, in our third project about Big Data, I commented on my peer Kiara’s essay regarding her source integration/evidence, stating, “this is all written in the past tense so I’m confused as to whether your stating that we did not have the proper means of handling big data with crime or that we still do not; maybe provide more “I Say” on what you think about her statements in the ted talk, making sure to tie back to your main claim”. With this peer review comment, I draw attention to how her claim and evidence for the paragraph are written in two different tenses. The evidence definitely matches the argument in that it addresses the same issues but it must support the claim in order to be effective. I also advise her to include more of what she thinks of the topic in addition to the evidence. As part of framing, it is helpful to summarize what the quote means and then continue to express how you feel about the topic to help strengthen your argument. Finally, I make a note to make sure her paragraph essentially ties back with her main argument because it should be supporting it and flow well opposed to having the audience question why it is there in the first place. In relation to my previous comment, I also have one near the end of the paragraph stating, “I think for this paragraph you focus a lot on how big data has lacked in helping us with this issue in the past so I would suggest providing some evidence to prove how it can help this cause because your claim states that it can be used to help fight crime” to further highlight how there is this distinct disconnect between her claim and evidence when it should be one supporting the other. I can easily see how my peer review comments have gotten much more personal and in-depth, providing more feedback to my peers and helping them with improving their essay, mainly targeting their global revisions first and then going back to fix the surface-level errors.
