Almost There!

I can't believe I only have one more week in this writing class until it will be summer vacation. Due to my high engagement in this course, I have learned so much about animal science and rights as well as new writing strategies and different approaches to take when reviewing my peers' work.

Review Process

For this week, I unfortunately only had the opportunity of reviewing a single essay instead of two. This is because one of my peers did not turn in their essay. Despite this, I was still able to connect online with one student, Sonqui Wen. During my review process, I provided suggestions about his essay as well as occasionally highlighted certain aspects I believe he excelled at. First off, his literature review part of the draft mainly discussed how primates have demonstrated intelligence and emotion in three different scientific studies. Then, in his problem section, he illustrated how deforestation is a huge issue facing primates that must end in order to save their species. My overall impression of his draft was that it was on the right track, but could use improvement, specifically in his problem section. One piece of advice I gave was based on peer review question 5, "Defining The Problem." In reference to this question, I felt as if his problem was not clearly defined by a discussion of its history and in turn, prohibiting his readers from understanding its severity. Therefore, I noted that he should add some historical evidence or statistics about how deforestation has caused a dramatic decrease in the numbers of primates. This addition can provide a more effective development of the problem's urgency since it can demonstrate how deforestation has worsened overtime. Once he includes this, I believe his readers will have a better chance at realizing that the problem of deforestation needs to come to an end in order to stop the killing of primates and save their species from extinction.

The picture I included above reveals the best advice I believe I gave to Sonqui Wen. This is because I asked him a question that other readers might wonder after reading his essay, which is not something he wants to occur. Hopefully, after he reads my feedback, he will understand that he can depict deforestation as a more severe and striking issue that his readers should pay attention to. I even provided an example of how he could possibly accomplish this for reference.

Peer Review Work

It might be odd to some people, but this writing course is not all about writing a pitch perfect essay. Instead, it is also about learning from your mistakes and helping others along the way by giving them revision advice. Since the beginning, I remember commenting on my peers' blog posts in order to illustrate what I thought worked well and what could possibly be enhanced to improve their work as a whole. This included, but was not limited to: responses pertaining to various Twitter experiences and tweets, possible animal science topics, and literature review essays. Although this course was not in person, I was allowed to talk about my peers' work using different communication methods that often took place on Wix, Twitter, and Connect. Based on my advice and experiences so far, the work that tended to stand out to me the most were the ones that had many transition sentences, clear headers, and a lot of detail that answered the given questions or assignment. In other words, the students who went above and beyond and did more than the minimum requirements usually had the best blogs, tweets, and essays. Looking back on the advice I gave, there were two I distinctly remember that can actually help everyone in Writing 39C. The first one was to use the "Ask a Librarian" feature if students are struggling to find sources for their Literature Review and Advocacy Essays. Secondly, I suggested that students should visit Professor McClure during office hours. The reason why I gave these two pieces of advice was because they were both very helpful for me and I believe they can also help my peers in writing a successful essay. Surprisingly, I do not recall any advice I received that confused me. I took every suggestion into consideration and sometimes even applied it to my work if I noticed improvement.

Overall, peer review has been a helpful tool that caused me to read with a purpose and discover aspects in my peers' work that were incorrect or could be enhanced. Based on my experience, peer review is important because I was able to practice my close reading skills, notice how others approached an essay with a similar purpose, and realize some points I needed to change in my own essay. Furthermore, I have learned much about peer review from reading my peers' work and providing advice. For instance, I sometimes realized that some of the advice I gave could even be applied to my own assignment in order to improve its quality. As a result, I began to value the time spent talking about my writing with another writer or even helping a fellow student who might need advice. This allowed me to not only help them in their endeavor to sophisticatedly write a good essay, but caused me to notice some flaws in my own work. Despite this, one downside of peer review is that it does take some time and is not an "easy" assignment students can complete with barely any effort. As a whole though, peer review has been a great experience that has helped me tremendously in this writing course.

Based on the scientific study "To Give is Better than to Receive," I truly believe that I got more out of giving advice than receiving it. I do not know if this was because the students who reviewed my essays did not put in enough effort, in terms of providing honest suggestions, or because I actually learned more from guiding others through possible improvements in their own work. Due to the fact that I constantly read and responded to others' work, I believe I did get some good ideas for my own writing. This allowed my reading habits and skills to further develop and improve throughout this quarter.