Bailey Hughes’s Rough Draft of Essay 3: https://docs.google.com/a/une.edu/document/d/1law4lKoSv85wJ2EMHcxul0twWLv6smdiaVLheuq1w8Y/edit?usp=sharing

My skills as a reviewer of others’ work are best exhibited in my comments on Bailey Hughes’s Rough Draft of Essay 3. I think my remarks on this paper are some of the most explicit out of all the times I’ve done peer review in this class.

When we performed our first peer review activity on the Entry Essay, I commented mostly upon local revision areas in  my partners’ papers. Since then, I’ve made a greater effort to look for mistakes involving global categories.  I’ve been more frequently commenting upon and asking questions about potential Ideas the author could add, as well as missing Evidence to support present ideas and the Organization of sentences; these remarks have been labeled I, E, and O, respectively. Bailey’s essay showcases this particularly well.  For instance, for her naysayer’s point of view, she states  “Sure, you could argue that social change is very boring, it’s going nowhere, and it takes up too much of our personal time,” but does not explain why anyone would think that.  Thus, in comment 47, I request Evidence and ask, “How can you argue that? What evidence does this opposing view have to back up their claims?” This comment prompted her to give the counterargument more say so readers would see she was not dismissing her opponents entirely.  Concerning Organization, the best example of a comment in that area is my 42nd comment, in which I recommend Bailey move a sentence from the middle of a paragraph to become the paragraph’s topic sentence.  But the comments that call for the most drastic change are those in my Return Letter on Bailey’s Ideas.  This is especially true of the third bullet under “Global Revisions,” when I suggested she change her thesis to focus on education, something she clearly supported, from just arguing social change is important in general for the climate change movement.

For Local revision comments, labeled L, I went over the essay twice. While looking at the global areas mentioned previously, I also remarked on wording a lot.  I would sometimes ask that entire sentences be rephrased, and once even made a specific suggestion of what to say  in my 49th comment (I felt her introduction of the seventh paragraph could be summed up more efficiently).  I made several comments on grammar and punctuation as well, such as when I discovered an error pattern of fragments starting with comment 14.  Then I skimmed through the paper again to check on citations and transitions.  Bailey’s citations were good, but I found that her paragraph transitions could use some help, as I state in my return letter. So as you can see, my local revision comments on this paper vary in topic, far different from those I wrote for the Entry Essay, which were solely focused on grammar/punctuation.

I’ve found this strategy of asking more questions, offering up potential phrases to use, and looking at grammar/punctuation the first time through, then reviewing once more for missed citation and transition mistakes, is a good way to offer advice to my peers. I’ve been doing this for all of the major essays, but this essay is the one for which I came up with the most ideas for improvement. My reviewing skills are in a good spot in my opinion, and I will certainly continue to use these tactics for future peer review.

Note: The bullets in my return letter are not number-labeled.