Peer responding can be constructive

Writers can become highly motivated to revise when peer readers with some training and practice respond to larger issues in a draft such as content, organization, tone, emphasis, use of evidence or details, etc.  But to get productive peer response sessions, that is, responses balanced with both earned praise and constructive critique, the instructor has to invest some smart planning, modeling of the process, scaffolded training, and assignment-specific criteria and questioning.

Peer editing —where students troll classmates’ drafts for errors—can occasionally be effective, but only with some caveats:

Peer editors first need solid background knowledge in language use and practice. If untrained classmates are simply allowed to start editing a classmate’s draft, or worse, rewriting some of the sentences, chaos can reign. A common problem, for example, is when peer editors tell writers that every long sentence is a “run-on.” Or, they perpetuate what Bryan Garner calls “superstitions,” and they chastise writers for such things as beginning a sentence with “And” or ending with a preposition. Hapless writers can end up fixing things that aren’t wrong or scratching their heads over confusing comments. And real errors can go undetected.

If readers are trained to look for patterns of error, and they have some tact in pointing out those patterns, their input can be very helpful.

Because first things (ideas, content, organization, tone) should be addressed first, peer editing should always be done on a late-stage draft—one close to being finished—and never on an early draft in which the writer is still forming ideas and organization. Who wants to invest time meticulously editing a draft only to decide later to delete a whole paragraph or page?

There’s much that can go wrong with peer response and especially with peer editing. Many instructors try it once and then run from it forever. Most students do not come to class knowing how to respond effectively to the drafts of their peers. They need to be taught. But when it’s successful, there are many positive outcomes.

PROS:

Productive Peer Response Can

• Help responders come to see the value of certain types of evidence or examples
• Help writers consider adding more details or needed evidence to their drafts
• Help writers see what’s confusing to their readers, while there’s still time to revise
• Help writers see what’s working: what in their draft moves or engages readers
• Help responders return to their own writing with a better sense of what is effective, or what to avoid
• Help instructors invest their time on more developed drafts

CONS:  

Unproductive Peer Response Can

• Humiliate writers if responders are too negative, tactless, or snarky
• Give writers a false sense of security about their draft if readers are too positive about mediocre work
• Perpetuate what Bryan Garner calls “superstitions” about grammar rules (i.e. telling writers something is wrong when it’s not)
• Intimidate insecure responders, who don’t know what to say and therefore simply echo bad advice they may have received in the past
• Give students and instructors the false impression that “peer responding doesn’t work.”

What teachers need to do for peer responding to be successful:

• Differentiate between peer responding (peers commenting on content, organization, development, and tone) and peer editing (peers finding errors. Be careful. Peer “editing” can sometimes call out fictional “errors,” which helps no one).
• Make sure teachers’ own responses to student work are constructive and specific
• Devote class time to establishing ground rules and procedures, with input from students
• Give some thought to which students can/should work together
• Model the process, using, perhaps, the instructor’s own draft or the draft of an unidentified sample found on the web
• Design assignment-specific questions—not generic questions downloaded from the internet (i.e.“Is the writing clear?”)
• Provide some assignment-specific “sentence starters” so that students have a framework for responding: “I’d like to know more about….”  (See Donald Daiker’s research.) “You seem to be arguing that….”  “Here is an opportunity to….” (Nancy Mack’s idea), “I like the way you…..” “Some readers might….”
• Provide scaffolded practice time in class—make sure students know what they’re doing and have some successful experiences as both responders and as writers getting feedback
• Consider using Blackboard or another platform so that students have digital access to drafts and can respond outside of class time as well
• Monitor responses and let students know you’ll be doing so. You may want to assess the responses or at least check them off

What’s the Verdict?

Peer response can be well worth the time it takes to learn how to do successfully. Teaching students how to make supportive, constructive responses to their peers’ writing, and how to edit responsibly, can help both the writer and the responder. Having students revise their work based on a productive round of peer commentary can help instructors focus their comments on higher-order issues in more developed drafts. But effective peer response or peer editing doesn’t just happen. It must be taught and practiced.