Peer Response as Part of the Dynamic Writing Process

Invention Strategies for Peer Response

How can I help students prepare for peer response by situating it within the context of the assignment and writing process?

• Students could work collaboratively to draft peer response questions based on the assignment guidelines and evaluation criteria.

• Students could freewrite about the challenges they are facing and the types of feedback that would be helpful to them at this stage in their composing process.

• In Works in Progress, Lisa Ede encourages students to elicit descriptive responses (see p. 273 in the 5^th ed.). She urges students to ask readers to: say what the writers’ main points seem to be, point to memorable words or passages, summarize the passage, suggest what’s implied, or identify the central idea.

• In A Meeting of Minds, Callaghan and Dobyns suggest students follow a focused agenda for peer review (see p. 332 in 2^nd ed.). They note that peer evaluation is a complicated task, but that it helps students obtain readers’ feedback and learn to read their own work with a new lens.

• In The Brief Thomson Handbook, Blakesley and Hoogeveen offer sample peer review questions and suggest strategies for reading peers’ texts from an informed perspective (see 3d). They also offer tips to both the writer and the reviewer to prep them for an engaging and helpful peer review process.

Drafting Strategies for Peer Response

What strategies can I employ to model effective response?

• Classes can role-play successful and unsuccessful peer response sessions and compare the characteristics of each.

• Students can participate in whole-class workshops.

• Professors can conduct group conferences with students to facilitate the peer review process, model helpful responses, and elicit additional feedback.

• In A Meeting of Minds, Callaghan and Dobyns offer characteristics of ineffective and effective writing (see p. 331 in 2^nd ed.). These lists give students language they can use as readers of peers’ drafts to identify strengths and challenges in what they are reading.

• In The Brief Thomson Handbook, Blakesley and Hoogeveen include instructions for using the comment function in MS Word (see 3d).

Revising Strategies for Peer Response

How can I support student revision in response to peer feedback?

• Students could write revision plans, detailing which feedback they will respond to and how.

• Classes could discuss how to respond to feedback collected during a whole-class workshop.

• In A Meeting of Minds, Callaghan and Dobyns suggest focuses for revision, helping students identify discreet tasks to complete one step at a time (see pp. 334-336 in 2^nd ed.). For instance students might first cut unnecessary material and then focus on extending their support for their argument as needed.

• In The Brief Thomson Handbook, Blakesley and Hoogeveen include a self-evaluation checklist for revision (see 3a). They also focus on revising for audience, purpose, and kairos.

Tags: peer response, rhetoric texts, writing process