Peer Review Blog

This week I reviewed two different essays, both of which were about dogs!

The first I reviewed started out with a story that included more pathos than anything else. It was about this dog named Hachi and his undying loyalty for his owner even after their death. I thought it was a great way to introduce their topic, though my advice was to cut down on the story a bit since it was rather long for the introduction which should be to the point. I also addressed their title since it wasn't centered correctly and could've been a bit more descriptive. Their title was "Advocacy Project:dogs' aggressive actions", and I suggested they try and fix it up some. You can see below what I suggested.

As for the second paper, I made a similar suggestion with the title and suggested they turn it into a descriptive two part title in order to make the essay seem more professional. They fleshed out their arguments well and had many citations which was great and showed they really did their research! The only thing is that they sometimes didn't cite, or cited incorrectly, so I went through and made sure to explain how to cite in MLA. For example, they cited Safina in the middle of a sentence, so I told them that for future reference, they should try to have the author from the piece they are citing at the end of the sentence. And that they should set this off with parenthesis. They also had some problems with making it flow well and structuring of their paragraphs in general, so I suggested they add headings to let the reader know where each section started and ended, as well as what that section was about.

I think I have definitely gotten better at giving advice, and I'm more critical of people now since we've had a whole quarter to fix the tiny mistakes we sometimes make in our writing. I focused on helping others become better professional writers since words can only do so much if everything is formatted incorrectly. Peer reviewing is very helpful, I have learned, since you notice things you didn't notice before. When you read your own paper, you are aware of what you are trying to say to the reader, but the reader sees it differently. The reader may not always know what you are trying to say, and this is a problem, especially for topics that are as important as this one. Any mistakes that you don't catch someone else will, and then you can rethink and revise to make your work better and more comprehensible for the audience.

I have always valued criticism from other people since I know I am not the best writer and my thoughts can get jumbled fast. Over this past quarter I have grown to appreciate the feedback even more, especially since I have been writing so much more than I am used to. The only complaint I really have is that since everything is online, it makes it hard to communicate with other people because everyone is on their own time. I do wish there was more hands-on engaging conversations happening, but I will take what I can get under the current circumstances.

I definitely think I learned more by reviewing than by reading my reviews. I was able to see what other people were doing and take the things I saw and make them my own, as well as see what I didn't particularly find useful and take that out of my own essay. It was almost like being at a buffet and picking and choosing all your favorite things to make a tasty meal, except this was an essay and not a plate full of my favorite foods. Weird analogy, but it was what came to mind.

Well, time to head off and get some food, I made myself hungry after all that peer reviewing!

Signing off for now...

Emi out :D