Peer Review

Giving Considerate Feedback

When you are giving feedback to your peers, it's important to keep your tone positive and offer suggestions. Stay away from ordering the student to do something differently or staying they did it wrong.

For example, consider the following examples:

X You should have included more information before getting into the story.

X Add an introduction and a conclusion to this paper. This was explained in the assignment.

X This entire paper is disorganized.

These examples are not positive. They are either commanding that the writer needs to do it a specific way or focusing on the draft being "wrong" or bad. The following are better ways to suggest the same problems:

✓ It might help the reader understand better what is happening if you added some more information at the beginning of the story. For example, I didn't understand that Maria was your sister.

✓ I suggest that you add an introduction and conclusion when you revise this paper. I wasn't quite sure what the paper was going to be about when I started reading it, and that will also help with it fit with the genre. The points in the body paragraphs were really clear though!

✓ I was struggling a bit with the organization of this paper as I was reading it. You might want to look at your topic sentences and transitions when you revise. I think all your points were really good, I was just finding myself confused a few times when you switched topics.

Hopefully, you can see the difference between the top three comments and the bottom three comments. The bottom three are more gentle and explain why you struggled as a reader with those spots. Additionally, they make "suggestions" instead of "commands" or "orders." The review is to help the other student get another perspective on their writing, but it's only a suggestion. They (and you) won't be required to make all of the suggested changes. Although, I do recommend that you seriously consider any suggestions you receive from your classmates!