As a reader and a writer, I believe that peer review is one of the most important parts of the writing process. Peer review allows the writer of the paper to get a taste of some of the criticisms they may face when putting their paper out into the world. The best part about peer review is the fact that the author will be able to fix their mistakes before they officially publish their paper. Throughout the semester, I feel like the way I review papers has drastically improved. During my first reviews, I would have a tough time picking out global errors and would instead have a tough time getting passed the local errors. Seeing things like grammatical errors or spelling mistakes were tough to overlook in the first reviews, because they stuck out and felt like they were screaming for attention. As I practiced peer reviewing, I got better at ignoring these mistakes and looking for global errors. I would mostly try to find places where the paper didn’t seem to flow well, which was a good indication of a global error. Or I would try to give suggestions based off of what the author needed help with. In the images below, the author asked for help finding what he could take out to help him get in the range of word count. I found a part of his essay that didn’t seem to fit the flow of the essay, and helped him effectively hit word count. Some places I hope to improve are to be able to recognize more errors in papers. This will hopefully come with more experience and practice with peer reviewing.
