What is the purpose of peer revision, and

What is your perspective on them?

I believe that peer revisions exist because it’s another way for the professor to teach students how to give and receive constructive criticism. The writer gives their work to a peer who then goes over the work. The readers suggest some improvement and the writer considers and learns what another person thinks about their work. The professor may not necessarily be teaching them yet the professor knows what they are going to learn. Revisions are used to furthermore enhance the students writing. Some students they have done a great job yet they don’t realize that they are lacking some skills that students can share with them in order to improve their article. That’s why I believe peer revisions exist. In the article it is clearly stated that some professors dread the idea that students have peer revisions because of the naïve comments that they leave behind. One of the main reasons that students leave such comments behind is because they are not being attentive to the assignment in hand. Some students just want to get over the revision, but in reality, peer revision is not about who finishes quicker in the group. Peer revisions are about understanding the assignment in hand thoroughly and adequately. Even though most students just “blow off” peer revisions, they are still widely used by some. Those who do use them boast on the new found knowledge they acquired. I guess u can say that attending a peer revision and making your essay, paragraph, etc, is more or less like an ego booster. Like I said before, some may think that they have written a masterpiece, but when that “Masterpiece “ leaves the revision, the author knows that they can do, better; therefore they work on it and forget it into what they thought they once had.

Q&R3

Q: Why does it take more than one student to evaluate, and correct another students writing?

I know for a fact two heads are better than one and four heads are better that two. We all can’t find the same mistake as any other can, so it takes another pair of eye’s to look over and undo the mistake taking place. Peer revision is established so that the reader is commenting and giving reactions as mentioned in Neubert & McNelis article. It also includes that as people we have different thoughts on how we hear, and interpret sounds. Based on the N&M, hearing another student speak out the writer’s article helps others identify different changes within the page. Criticizing is very important in how a group studies the writer’s page, much so, letting the writer know how many mistakes they have will really encourage them to go to the next level, thus, having them make changes on their own mistakes.

q&r3

What is PQP –Praise-Question-Polish?

This question is about the article “Peer Response: Teaching Specific Revision Suggestions” by Neubert and McNelis. This is a very interesting article because I identified myself with the study Neubert and McNelis did. They realized that when the students had the task to revise their classmates essays they were very shy or gave very vague comments about the writing and some of the students did not find helpful comments to improve their writing.

PQP is a technique that means Praise-Question-Polish, Neubert and McNelis realized that the students are more focused in the task and they critique a little bit more. PQP consists of a series of questions, the students need to be in groups of two to five; first Praise is answering the questions “What is good about the writing? What should not be changed? Why is it good?” then, the part of the Question is “as a reader, what do you not understand?” and finally the polish comes about with the question “What specific suggestions for improvement con you make?”

Even though some students used this technique they still gave vague comments. They separated the comments in three groups: “vague, general but useful, or specific”, 19% of the students gave vague comments, 28% specific and 53% general but useful comments. I think students will get better at giving comment in their classmates with practice and this is a very fun and easier way to think more about what you are reading. They said that after repeating this technique the students started to give more specific and helpful comments.

In my case, I found this very useful since I have difficulty giving comments to my classmates’ writings. I realized that this is what we do in our class, and seriously this had helped me a lot because if the teacher gives us the questions like this (PQP), more ideas come to my mind just by answering those questions.

Q&R 3

How does tutoring and peer response help you have better writing?

Personally, when someone revises my paper and gives me tips on what to do, I feel better. If I was feeling a little insecure about my writing, chances are, they will help you out to make the most out of your writing. Tutoring helps you because you can have a way better grasp on the subject you are writing about. It helps you become a better writer and more in touch with the subject you are writing about. In general, I feel that peer response helps students become better writers because they can point out the things that you missed and that you made unclear. They are, after all, your audience so if they get lost or don’t understand, it’s probably the same things that is going to happen to another reader. They have a firsthand experience of the reader. When the writer sees the revisions and comments from the peer revision, they can mold the writing to the way that the reader will understand. When the person who is revising uses the PQP method, the writer will feel better because they know that the person understands the point that they are trying to get across.

Q&R 3

Question: How does one benefit from PQP?

Answer: often teachers have the misconception that students lack the intellectual capacity of being able to read and acknowledge mistakes done by fellow classmates. This is not entirely true; an average student has the capacity of catching a mistake on a paper that a teacher might have overseen. Why? Simply because the student and the teacher are reading the same paper in different points of view. This can work even more efficiently if more students read the same paper and comment for revision rather than just one or two, this technique is called PQP (praise-question-polish) this technique has been used for years and has had a really good successful rate." The article peer response: Teaching specific revision suggestions" describe this as a "technique requires group members to take a turn reading their draft aloud as other follow along with copies." I believe that the reasons that this technique has a really good successful rate this that persons who are revising ones paper are fellow classmates who are able to identify mistakes made in ones writing. The PQP technique not benefits the write but also the person who is reading the paper. Because the method requires that students who are reading the paper to comment back on specific errors or mistake that the paper might have. These comments have to be narrowed down to its specific errors instead of being vague comments. One should question the fellow paper with question such as “Why was the story just ok? What details did the writer lack? Did the writer provide sufficient informative details in story for the reader to imagine what she/ he were trying to say? Why and why not? This questions help the writer correct her/his mistake in an efficient way. In conclusion one can say that PQP benefits one in the art correcting a paper and enhances the reader response to the paper.

Q&R 3: Explain the structure of P.Q.P. and why you think it is an effective method of revision.

The structure of P.Q.P. is a very simple one, yet because of its simplicity it is very effective and easy to understand. First of all I shall explain what the abbreviation P.Q.P. stands for. The first “P” is for Praise. This means that the student doing the revision of his peers’ paper will give praise to it, or in other words, find something in the essay that he liked very much. The second letter “Q” stands for question. This means that the peer doing the revision must ask a question that he has concerning the paper. This question may be of something within the story that did not make sense to him, or he may ask why the writer wrote a certain thing asking him to explain further his reason. The third letter “P” stands for polish. Within this segment the peer is asked to make a suggestion to the story that would be able to clarify a certain point in the story, or maybe the suggestion may be to remove a certain part, or maybe to add a certain element.

These three steps sound simple enough, and they are, but what makes them so effective is the fact that they are specific. Each time a student is asked to complete any of these three steps, he is asked to give his reply in the most specific and useful details he or she can give. Because of this the student receiving the critique is given something useful and detailed to work with when he receives his paper back, giving him something to think about the next time he writes a paper. Another reason that this method is so effective is because of its’ simplicity. Because it is so simple it is easy to remember, therefore allowing the user of this method to better focus on the actual steps rather than thinking about what is being asked of him.

By: Denise

Q&R: 3

Q&R 3: After reading about skills needed for revising a group member’s piece, would you consider yourself a reader who can “draw inferences, make predictions, [and/or] construct meaning in a text”?

I consider myself a reader who, first of all, follows rhetorical strategies in every piece that she reads through. I start by reading the text fully and marking the mistakes the writer made (such as grammatical, and use of words) and, primordially, the sentence structure, which is most important for the reader to understand. After going through the piece, I go back and comment on the few errors in it and advise the writer of the details it needs or how to develop certain sentences to make their audience understand.
I would mostly be the type of person that makes many predictions of a writer’s piece because I focus based on what they are trying to say and how they try to approach their audience to predict things deep into the text, such as, why they wrote the piece or for what kind of audience their essay was written. Predicting what is “between the lines” requires the capability of understanding the text (usually, I rely on rhetorical strategies to help me read beyond the essay when applying to making predictions) to a certain extent, which is salient that it is the author who needs to be understood.
Also, drawing inferences is another easy form of criticism for me because I infer what the text is saying, especially when in a group because I learn from other people’s opinions as they draw their own inferences from the same piece.
If I try constructing the meaning to a text, there is a high chance that I do not know what type of meaning I am looking for or I may have misinterpreted the piece, which usually happens to inexperienced readers. There is a difficult process to constructing meaning in an essay because I, as a peer, have to understand the piece well enough to summarize it all. Therefore, such a reading skill is not my strength.
I may lack certain “high order reading skills,” yet I now keep in mind that I should start practicing my reading and know how to criticize “specifically” and analyze an essay better by having more group discussions since they boost our confidence and expand our vocabulary. Therefore, after reading Neubert’s and McNelis’, and Gillam’s articles, I realized that I mostly applied to inferring what an essay says and predicting things deep into the author’s intentions.

Q & R 3

Do you avoid being biased in your peer editing? Where do you notice yourself holding back?

When we peer edit we can see that the task becomes complicated simply because the process involves commenting on the work of our friends of fellow students. This makes the task difficult because we see a type of bias in our editing. In statistics it is desired to reduce as much bias as possible to gain a generally more accurate set of data, and to do this we must either single blind or double blind our subjects. The concept behind blinding is simple, in a single blind one party, either the examiners or the test subjects must not have knowledge of the other. For example, if I gave a test out to the class, they should take the test without my presence, or another option is as I am grading their test I refrain from gaining knowledge of their names. A double blind is similar, except instead of blinding one party both parties have no knowledge of the other, hence the test results are not affected by the subjects feeling pressured by the presence of the test administrator or the administers grading by their relationship with the subject(s). Generally blinding works, however on page 98 of "Research in the classroom" we see how in Spear's method a reviewer must expose his or her own self to the writer, which in turn provides a larger margin of error for a type bias to form. I believe that this gets in the way of our results when we know that we are close to our peers. The feeling of telling someone you’ve gotten close to is awkward, mostly because you don’t want to make them feel as if you’re insulting them. However, as long as all comments are purely based on facts the writer should not feel insulted. I feel that these factors all play into how we individually respond to the work of our peers, but with practice the reader can learn how to omit these factors from their revision strategies, and produce a better and more helpful response to the writer, hence increasing improvement on both sides of the text.

Q & R 3: What are the factors that interfere with the effectiveness of peer-response activities?

Peer-response activities should be helpful for everyone, but these kinds of activities do not always work out so well. I believe that there are two factors that interfere when it comes to the helpfulness and effectiveness of such activities and to improve writing.
One of these factors is the will the author of the text that is going to be commented on has to accept and take into account the comments when revising the paper. The author may not like the comments or think that they are not good enough for the revision, and he will decide not to pay attention to them. Sometimes, peers can make very good and specific comments that will surely be great to improve the text, but the author may not take them into account, thus lacking the possibility of making his or her text a better one. I get identified with this case because I do not always take the suggestions my peers give me. I only get the ones I consider will make my text better. On the other side, the author may like the comments and, as Neubert and McNelis say, “when students receive concrete suggestions for revision, they do revise with the suggestions in mind” (52,Peer Response.). The author does take the comments into account to improve the text, but it is the author’s final decision of whether or not to take the comments or suggestions.
The other factor that interferes is the quality and effectiveness of the comments the peers offer during the activity. As Neubert and McNelis mentioned, “the students complained about the writing responses, saying that their peers rarely offered substantial help with their writing” (52, Peer Response). If the peers do not provide the author with specific or at least useful comments, they will confuse and mislead him or her instead of helping.
As a solution for this, Neubert and McNelis propose that students have to provide the writer with specific comments, tell why it is necessary to revise certain sentences or paragraphs, thus giving specific direction for revision (54 Learning through Response). It is true that, as Gillam say, “peer response benefits the respondent as much as the one to whom the response is directed” (98, Learning through Response), but I think that if the factors mentioned before are present during the activity, both the respondent and the writer will be affected.
These articles made me realize that I have not been giving good comments to my peers during the workshops, and it is a shame because I am not making them any good. It also made me realize that I really need to start giving specific suggestions to my peers so that I can help them with their writing.
Both factors I mentioned do not allow the peer-response activities to be effective. Thus, it is very important to put more effort in every activity so that everyone can learn.

Peer Revision

How can you apply the PQP to improve your classmate's essay?

Why is the activity effective?