The ability to effectively and efficiently peer review a paper is crucial to strengthening not only others’ work but your own. When making suggestions and reading the works of others, you can form new ideas and see what works and what doesn’t in their papers while reflecting on your paper. At the beginning of the year, my peer review process was admittedly (and unfortunately) a little subpar. In high school I never really had to think about the actual content in the paper when peer reviewing, but rather the grammar and organization of the paper. While I tried to offer feedback on those earlier papers, I was still grasping at what good feedback looked like. Contrastly, in my more recent papers, I feel as though I have a good understanding of what helpful peer review looks like. More than grammar, spelling, and formatting (though, those are still important!) I focused more on the substance of the paper. Below I have attached my comments on a fellow classmate’s paper. When going through and leaving comments, I first like to look at the big picture and main points of their paper. Unlike regular annotating, the knowledge that the author will not only read your comments but take them into account adds a layer of personalization to the margins. My annotations on these peer review papers typically involve either asking a question, stating an organization comment, or offering suggestions regarding how a point could either be concised or expanded on. For example, at the top of page three of my peer’s paper, he ends a body paragraph with the sentences: “To me, the word “brain-rot” is a little scary . I’ll be it, an overexposure to the digital world is unhealthy, though I believe we are tuned out of the potential benefits that Anderson hints at technology having” (Cristoforo 3). My comments were as follows: “What about the term ‘brain-rot’ is scary to you? I would expand more on this”; “How so? Elaborate on what parts of Anderson’s thoughts we are drifting away from to strengthen your “I” say”; and “Change ‘I’ll be it’ to ‘albeit’.” My first two comments ask questions of the author, asking for expansion on ideas. I believe that prompting ideas is just as important as giving suggestions. Asking my peers to expand on their ideas pushes them to think deeper and interact with their materials in a more meaningful way, and allows me to interact with the material they’ve already written in a way that’s more in depth.
