Tips for Effective Peer Response

Peer response, done well, can greatly improve the quality of your writing in your final draft. Many people confuse peer response with editing or proofreading. Peer response is not just proofreading--in fact, proofreading is only one small part of the peer response (and for some projects proofreading doesn’t come into play at all). Peer response is the process of responding to writing at macro and micro levels and in ways that offer helpful, constructive feedback.

General Tips For Both Writers and Responders

As a peer, you are a well-qualified person to read and respond to your peer’s drafts. You’ve been in the class, you know the assignment, you’re a thinking reader. Providing the writer feedback on what you thought as you read the draft is helpful and important. You are not expected to look at it with the eye of an instructor nor do you need special training to give your opinion.

Think about the assignment and review the grading criteria. Of course, you and all of your peers want to get the highest grade possible. You can help each other with this goal by closely reviewing the grading criteria that will be used to evaluate the finished paper. Does the work you’re responding to fit the parameters of the assignment? Does it include all the required parts of the assignment? If you are concerned that the paper is missing an assignment element or does not fully answer a question in the prompt, be sure to express your concerns to your classmate and offer suggestions.

Specific Tips For Writers

Tell your peer responder what you want feedback on specifically. If you know you strugglewith a particular element (integrating tables, for example), ask you peer to be sure to provide feedback about that.

• If possible, share your work with at least two different people. Each reader may have different perspectives that help you think about your writing in different ways.
• Use peer response to reflect on your own writing. By practicing response techniques with your peers, you may find that you have a different perspective on your own writing when you look at it again.
• Remember that not all advice given during peer response must be taken. Each responder may offer different advice that may be contradictory or may go against your own vision for your work. Consider the responses of your peers seriously but remember that the final choices for your writing rest with you.

Specific Tips For Responders

Comment on things that the writer does particularly well. We’re all human and no one wants to only get told what can be better. Also, by being shown what’s working really well, writers than have a model for how to improve other sections that may not be working so well. Be sure to highlight the parts of the paper that are effective and make that feedback part of your response. What did you like best about the paper? What did you think was most effective? Why?

• Comment on things that the writer could improve. Every written project, no matter how good, can always be improved. You absolutely want to offers suggestions to the writer on ways to revise their paper to make it better. The weakest peer responses are when someone says, “Looks good” or just writes “Nice” or “Great.”       
• Frame all your feedback in constructive ways that offer suggestions. Note how you word your feedback and be sure to keep it friendly, constructive, and supportive. Remember to be encouraging and positive – peer response is for the benefit of all parties.
• If possible, provide both oral and written feedback. Using the comment feature in Google Drive or in Word, can also be helpful.
• Provide feedback on macro issues of organization and content. Is the main idea of the paper clear? Does it stay focused throughout? Is it arranged in a way that makes sense? Could the argument be organized in a more effective manner? Is enough and appropriate evidence provided to support the points being made?
• Provide feedback on micro issues of organization and content. This may require a second reading where you pay close attention to sentence-level issues such as word choice, sentence length, and tone.
• If appropriate, provide feedback on use of visuals. Tables and figures are important in many papers. Be sure to check that these are labeled correctly and referenced in-text.
• If you catch any misspellings, typos, punctuation or grammar errors, formatting mistakes, etc., be sure to let your classmate know. While peer response is more than proofreading, helping to catch these minor errors will also aid your classmate in turning in the most polished work possible.
  

Howe Writing Initiative ‧ Farmer School of Business ‧ Miami University

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