I think the biggest development in my peer review skills is digging deeper into my peer’s paper. At the start of the semester, my advice consisted largely of surface level errors and corrections to wording that was clunky. I found myself making comments about things that I noticed, not whether it was done well or poorly. Things like “I see a thesis here” not “Here is your thesis, it is still developing and more precision in your language would better map out your essay to prepare your reader for what is coming.” I also think my first attempts at peer review were more conversational. I would make several quick remarks and expect my peer to know how to fix them, as opposed to giving actual advice that they can use.
It is not only that my peer reviews got more in depth for constructive advice to that actual content of the paper, but I was able to ignore the surface level errors that used to stick out to me so strongly. I realized it isn’t actually valuable to give that kind of advice, because for one, my college level peers should know how to use commas, and also there are so many sources out there that if my peers cared about these errors, they could plug it into Grammarly.com and get the same advice back. I realized that the value of peer review should be so much deeper than that. My advice has developed substantially, and I think the biggest way this was done was through asking questions. My comments changed from statements to asking why a choice was made, forcing my peer to ask themselves that question and hopefully expand their idea in the process. I hoped that the answers to these questions could be included in the essay to clarify the questions that a future reader may also have while reading this.
While I already feel that I have grown in my peer review skills this semester, I can tell I have more growth to come. I still feel too cautious when peer reviewing and struggle to give brutally honest feedback for fear of coming off as mean. Hopefully, more practice will help me learn the best ways to approach this so that my peers will actually want to listen to my advice.
