I felt that the end summary of their global concerns of my essay were helpful to read. I got a lot out of that. My peers who reviewed my essay all had similar suggestions, which made me feel like, okay this must be a real thing I need to fix. Peer reviewing with groups three or more is helpful. Specifically, James had a long global and local concerns paragraph at the end of the peer review that was helpful. I also had put my citations a little weird, and I fixed them all to match the MLA style. All of my peers felt my thesis needed help, which I easily fixed and it entirely made my essay better when I went back into my essay to support my thesis. I felt that I had a good amount of comments in my peers’ essays that were helpful. Not only quick and easy fixes but also major ideas that needed to be fixed or moved around. Specifically, I helped Tyler with the fact that he addressed people as “Americans” 5-10 times, although the memoir may be about Americans, Turkle doesn’t exactly say that. It was redundant but an easy fix. Another easy fix on Franco’s just making sure that the date was when the essay is due. Looking at the MLA format example given under the schedule was very helpful as well. During the in person discussion we said pretty much the same thing, there wasn’t much of a difference. Overall my essay definitely benefited greatly from the peer review.
The best “global” suggestion that I got from my peers was to “zoom out” and be a little more broad in my analysis. I think this one was the best because it alerted me to the fact that I was making my analysis too personal, or in other words, adding too much “I Say.” I wasn’t including the general audience in my writing and I also was drowning out Turkle’s words with my own, which was not good. This suggestion allowed me to go back and remove the over-personal details that I included, and make my essay more balanced. It also allows me to be more objective, therefore making my stance stronger. The best global suggestions I gave my peers was to make sure they were connecting their paragraphs back to their thesis. I believe these were my best suggestions because it is easy for people to get lost on tangents when writing their analysis, but one way that has helped me when writing is always making sure I have at least one sentence that references the thesis pretty directly, and I was happy that I could pass on that advice and have people tell me that it was helpful. One comment that came up that wasn’t written out was to “you’re trying to meet a word count.” I noticed some phrases in Noah’s essay that sounded out of place and like filler words. This helped meet the word count, but decreased the quality of his writing. I brought this up because I was then able to tie in one of my comments from earlier, which was to add more analysis. I told him that once they add more analysis, they will be able to remove the filler words without fear of being under the word count requirement.
I felt the peer review helped me with my paper tremendously. The comments that I found were the most helpful to my writing were about connecting my writing back to the prompt. I admit when I first started writing the paper I had no clue there was a prompt that we had to follow, even though it was clearly stated on the sheet as something to focus our writing on. So obviously this call to attention regarding the prompt was an absolute lifesaver. I don’t feel like I made the best suggestions on my peer’s writing. It’s not that I was lazy or anything. I just feel like I’m not good at giving feedback because I’m not the greatest at writing, leaving me feeling unqualified to critique other’s work on levels higher than word choice and grammatical errors. As a result, most of my suggestions were more along those lines. Then again the people whose papers I reviewed had very polished and refined writing, not to say their papers were perfect but on the global side it was tough to find something to critique. One important discussion point that came up but didn’t really make it onto the page was integrating my voice into the paper. It was suggested that I personalize my paper more, as in connecting with the text and the reader by comparing it to my own life, and I feel like I did an ok job but in the end not as good as I could have.
The global comments I found most helpful from my peers was the feedback they provided about the balance of the “they say/I say” within my paper. My peers pointed out specific portions of my work where they believed it would be advantageous to either add more personal examples or use less of Turkle’s direct ideas in order to have a better balance. I found this feedback especially helpful because I noticed within the writing process that I was struggling to know when to refer to Turkle and when to provide my own ideas and analysis. When it came to the feedback I provided my peers, I thought I gave really insightful comments about the importance of topic sentences and how they help shape and organize a paper. Having in-person discussions about the comments we provided on each other’s papers was beneficial as it allowed us to expand upon our feedback and work more proactively with one another. For example, when working on Noah’s paper, we were able to collaborate together and make it so his claim directly answered the prompt while also talking about his area of interest: the idea of technology provided a simulation of happiness and satisfaction. When discussing Faith’s paper, our in-person meeting allowed me to directly point out a paragraph that I felt could benefit from a topic sentence and she had a better understanding of where my suggestion was coming from. In addition, this allowed Noah to see the comments I provided on Faith’s paper and he was able to weigh in on a conversation he otherwise wouldn’t of have been able to if we didn’t meet collectively as a group.
For the global comments that my peers gave, they provided good comments when it came to my topic sentences. I have always struggled while writing my topic sentences and on my middle body paragraph, they made sure to point out that it was not very clear. Another big point they made was about my sentence structure. Several of my sentences felt like they had just been thrown in there for extra words, which led me to delete or revise them. Overall, my paper just had problems with sentence structure and connecting back to my thesis. When it came to my peers, I mainly suggested that they should make their thesis statement’s clearer and more concise. A major player was also grammar because their essays were still in the rough draft faze, so they still needed touchups. Another big point that I made was using quotes properly by providing a proper introduction and summary of the quote. Something that came up immediately while talking in our groups was improving our arguments. This included talking about clarifying our thesis and providing a counterargument. In Steven’s paper, we talked about how he had a strong argument and all he needed to add was more of Turkle’s ideas compared to his. This also brought up the idea of making sure to have a fair amount of they say to I say. Our last point was to make sure to mention a proper works cited and to end our papers with a conclusion that wrapped up our thesis and body paragraphs. Ultimately, my group was going down the right path, but we all needed to do was give each other helpful advice.
I feel as though the peer reviewed helped me be able to see my paper as a whole from someone else’s perspective and see how I could clarify certain sentences better. The comments that I found most helpful were about connecting my overall writing back to my thesis and main points I was making. During the conversation with both of my peers as well, we talked about how I could connect my paragraphs better as well. I found the talk as well as the comments made on my essay very helpful for fixing and rewriting certain points on my essay. When it came to my peers essays, the main comments I made were about grammar, as well as changing the wording of certain sentences to make the essay as a whole flow better. I also commented on how to rephrase quotes, as well as if they needed to shorten quotes or add more to it and even add some more analysis to the quotes. It was the best global suggestions to my peers so that they are able to have their essays flow better, as well as adding more context to their quotes analysis so that the reader will be able to understand why they put those quotes and how it works with what the main point of their essays were. Overall, my groups papers were very well written and strong, and all we really needed to do was give each other helpful information and feedback on how to make it stronger.
I feel as though the peer review process was vital for the growth of my paper. I think the 3 other sets of eyes made sure that any errors or places that could be sharpened up were tended to. I found the most helpful comments from my peers were those pertaining to my “I” voice. These comments stressed the importance of using my own experiences to emphasize the points that I was trying to drive home and in my original draft I had hardly used “I” statements aside from my thesis. Each classmate who reviewed my paper touched on this and highlighted the fact that doing so would make my argument that much stronger. My peers also stressed the importance of generalizing the essay and Turkle’s piece to the entirety of the world, not just Americans or American children, as in my first draft I had dedicated her studies and my opinions to Americans. This assumption that I had made in doing so creates a disconnect in a world where the issue of technology is worldwide. I think the best comments/suggestions that I had provided my peers was to make sure that each paragraph had a clear and concise topic sentence. I found that in the papers that I read that either lacked a topic sentence or did not have clear topic sentences, the flow of the overall essay was choppy, and the paragraph was hard to follow. I think that the in-person discussion made for important conversations and allowed for clarification to be made on what comments we had made about each other’s papers. For example, my thesis in my first draft was contradictory and my peers commented on that. But the discussion allowed them to explain their thinking and show me the changes they would make.
I see peer review as a very interesting tool when it comes to educational writing. When you begin an essay, it can be difficult to start to apply thoughts and form accurate descriptions of what you want to get across. Sometimes the infamous writers block can put an essay on hold for what seems like forever, and concentration on the topic of the paper can veer of course. This is a great first step in making sure the paper you are writing comes across as clearly as possible without missing the critical points. But this is only one perspective of the information, and sometimes a single perspective can actually hurt the ideas and message that is intended. Having a peer review session offers the original writer the opportunity to see a second and third opinion and perspective of how someone would digest the information. This step in writing a paper can enhance that information greatly.
The peer review session our group had was very informative and helped clear up some topics and areas of each of our papers. We went through each section of the paper and broke down how we could adjust the information presented, either minor changes to wording or addition to some parts helped clarify the message. The in-person conversation aspect was very helpful, as it added an element of concern from each person that put their own effort into reading the papers. Instead of just some colored pen marks that may not make sense to the reader, the ability to hear each person explain their thoughts on each section was very informative.
I think some of the best comments for global recommendations I got for my essay we about being concise in what I wanted to talk about through my essay. I had to better explain both of the sides of the coin that I sat on, both agreeing and disagreeing with many of the points that Sherry Turkle made throughout her own essay. Solidifying this within my thesis helped a ton with making it clear what I thought about the matter.
The best advice I could give for any of my peers’ essays was to always use more “I”. This essay is about you, about the writer’s experience with technology and how they responded to Turkle. It was cool to maybe see references to other people or places and a lot of Turkle’s own opinions, but I’m really reading this essay to know YOUR opinion. I told them to try to find experiences from their own lives, things that were commonplace for them, and to put it into context in the essay, using it as a tool to help the reader see your point of view. In my essay, I talked about how Turkle looks at this issue with a certain tint of rose-colored glasses, looking back at the “good ole’ days”, back when technology wasn’t around. So, what was your (as the writer of the essay)’s? How does this problem look from your own life? Your childhood? How does it affect you? That was the best advice I could ever offer.
During the writing process, I found the most helpful comments made for me were the ones referencing the use of “I say” in my essay. I found this to be the most helpful to me because without using “I say”, I did not have much feedback coming from me. This also was helpful for me because it increased the number of words in my essay by a lot, making it easier to finish my essay. I do not think I offered my peers the best suggestions. Most of the comments I am good at finding or identifying are grammatical errors or run-on sentences. So, with that being said I am not good at finding errors like how well a thesis is constructed or things like that. I still feel as though my comments were helpful to my peers, but I probably could have done a better job with them. We did not discuss many of the errors that pertained to spacing and condensing sentences. I thought this might have been a good thing to bring up because I feel as though that if you can not convey your thoughts concisely or at least in an organized manner, then your audience will not understand you. Another thing not brought up was grammatical errors. I also find that these small fixes can be very beneficial to you in the long run. These are helpful because small mistakes like that could cost you a point or so on your essay where there was no need to take points off.
The in class peer review discussion was a major part of the revision of my essay. It helped make my paper so much stronger. My peers helped me find a bunch of tiny and big mistakes in my paper. There were little things like grammar mistakes. However they also helped me introduce my quotes and paragraphs much better. A major thing for me was creating strong topic sentences to introduce the point of the paragraph and not just starting with the quote. Some of my sentences could have been structured better to make my paragraph stronger. For example, like the placement of my sentences. My peers had also suggested shortening or breaking up the quotes throughout my paragraphs. After talking through my essay and discussing things I could do better or fix was very helpful for me to understand where to start revising. After the discussion, taking their feedback helped make my paper flow much better. For my peers’ essay we talked about connecting their paragraphs together to have more of a flow. Another thing that helped their essay was connecting the points back to the thesis statement. We all mutually felt like we had to add more analysis to all of our papers to help strengthen our points. The more we elaborate on Turkle’s evidence, the stronger our papers would be. We were able to have a good conversation and talk through each other’s papers which was beneficial.
11 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 10”
I felt that the end summary of their global concerns of my essay were helpful to read. I got a lot out of that. My peers who reviewed my essay all had similar suggestions, which made me feel like, okay this must be a real thing I need to fix. Peer reviewing with groups three or more is helpful. Specifically, James had a long global and local concerns paragraph at the end of the peer review that was helpful. I also had put my citations a little weird, and I fixed them all to match the MLA style. All of my peers felt my thesis needed help, which I easily fixed and it entirely made my essay better when I went back into my essay to support my thesis. I felt that I had a good amount of comments in my peers’ essays that were helpful. Not only quick and easy fixes but also major ideas that needed to be fixed or moved around. Specifically, I helped Tyler with the fact that he addressed people as “Americans” 5-10 times, although the memoir may be about Americans, Turkle doesn’t exactly say that. It was redundant but an easy fix. Another easy fix on Franco’s just making sure that the date was when the essay is due. Looking at the MLA format example given under the schedule was very helpful as well. During the in person discussion we said pretty much the same thing, there wasn’t much of a difference. Overall my essay definitely benefited greatly from the peer review.
The best “global” suggestion that I got from my peers was to “zoom out” and be a little more broad in my analysis. I think this one was the best because it alerted me to the fact that I was making my analysis too personal, or in other words, adding too much “I Say.” I wasn’t including the general audience in my writing and I also was drowning out Turkle’s words with my own, which was not good. This suggestion allowed me to go back and remove the over-personal details that I included, and make my essay more balanced. It also allows me to be more objective, therefore making my stance stronger. The best global suggestions I gave my peers was to make sure they were connecting their paragraphs back to their thesis. I believe these were my best suggestions because it is easy for people to get lost on tangents when writing their analysis, but one way that has helped me when writing is always making sure I have at least one sentence that references the thesis pretty directly, and I was happy that I could pass on that advice and have people tell me that it was helpful. One comment that came up that wasn’t written out was to “you’re trying to meet a word count.” I noticed some phrases in Noah’s essay that sounded out of place and like filler words. This helped meet the word count, but decreased the quality of his writing. I brought this up because I was then able to tie in one of my comments from earlier, which was to add more analysis. I told him that once they add more analysis, they will be able to remove the filler words without fear of being under the word count requirement.
I felt the peer review helped me with my paper tremendously. The comments that I found were the most helpful to my writing were about connecting my writing back to the prompt. I admit when I first started writing the paper I had no clue there was a prompt that we had to follow, even though it was clearly stated on the sheet as something to focus our writing on. So obviously this call to attention regarding the prompt was an absolute lifesaver. I don’t feel like I made the best suggestions on my peer’s writing. It’s not that I was lazy or anything. I just feel like I’m not good at giving feedback because I’m not the greatest at writing, leaving me feeling unqualified to critique other’s work on levels higher than word choice and grammatical errors. As a result, most of my suggestions were more along those lines. Then again the people whose papers I reviewed had very polished and refined writing, not to say their papers were perfect but on the global side it was tough to find something to critique. One important discussion point that came up but didn’t really make it onto the page was integrating my voice into the paper. It was suggested that I personalize my paper more, as in connecting with the text and the reader by comparing it to my own life, and I feel like I did an ok job but in the end not as good as I could have.
The global comments I found most helpful from my peers was the feedback they provided about the balance of the “they say/I say” within my paper. My peers pointed out specific portions of my work where they believed it would be advantageous to either add more personal examples or use less of Turkle’s direct ideas in order to have a better balance. I found this feedback especially helpful because I noticed within the writing process that I was struggling to know when to refer to Turkle and when to provide my own ideas and analysis. When it came to the feedback I provided my peers, I thought I gave really insightful comments about the importance of topic sentences and how they help shape and organize a paper. Having in-person discussions about the comments we provided on each other’s papers was beneficial as it allowed us to expand upon our feedback and work more proactively with one another. For example, when working on Noah’s paper, we were able to collaborate together and make it so his claim directly answered the prompt while also talking about his area of interest: the idea of technology provided a simulation of happiness and satisfaction. When discussing Faith’s paper, our in-person meeting allowed me to directly point out a paragraph that I felt could benefit from a topic sentence and she had a better understanding of where my suggestion was coming from. In addition, this allowed Noah to see the comments I provided on Faith’s paper and he was able to weigh in on a conversation he otherwise wouldn’t of have been able to if we didn’t meet collectively as a group.
For the global comments that my peers gave, they provided good comments when it came to my topic sentences. I have always struggled while writing my topic sentences and on my middle body paragraph, they made sure to point out that it was not very clear. Another big point they made was about my sentence structure. Several of my sentences felt like they had just been thrown in there for extra words, which led me to delete or revise them. Overall, my paper just had problems with sentence structure and connecting back to my thesis. When it came to my peers, I mainly suggested that they should make their thesis statement’s clearer and more concise. A major player was also grammar because their essays were still in the rough draft faze, so they still needed touchups. Another big point that I made was using quotes properly by providing a proper introduction and summary of the quote. Something that came up immediately while talking in our groups was improving our arguments. This included talking about clarifying our thesis and providing a counterargument. In Steven’s paper, we talked about how he had a strong argument and all he needed to add was more of Turkle’s ideas compared to his. This also brought up the idea of making sure to have a fair amount of they say to I say. Our last point was to make sure to mention a proper works cited and to end our papers with a conclusion that wrapped up our thesis and body paragraphs. Ultimately, my group was going down the right path, but we all needed to do was give each other helpful advice.
I feel as though the peer reviewed helped me be able to see my paper as a whole from someone else’s perspective and see how I could clarify certain sentences better. The comments that I found most helpful were about connecting my overall writing back to my thesis and main points I was making. During the conversation with both of my peers as well, we talked about how I could connect my paragraphs better as well. I found the talk as well as the comments made on my essay very helpful for fixing and rewriting certain points on my essay. When it came to my peers essays, the main comments I made were about grammar, as well as changing the wording of certain sentences to make the essay as a whole flow better. I also commented on how to rephrase quotes, as well as if they needed to shorten quotes or add more to it and even add some more analysis to the quotes. It was the best global suggestions to my peers so that they are able to have their essays flow better, as well as adding more context to their quotes analysis so that the reader will be able to understand why they put those quotes and how it works with what the main point of their essays were. Overall, my groups papers were very well written and strong, and all we really needed to do was give each other helpful information and feedback on how to make it stronger.
I feel as though the peer review process was vital for the growth of my paper. I think the 3 other sets of eyes made sure that any errors or places that could be sharpened up were tended to. I found the most helpful comments from my peers were those pertaining to my “I” voice. These comments stressed the importance of using my own experiences to emphasize the points that I was trying to drive home and in my original draft I had hardly used “I” statements aside from my thesis. Each classmate who reviewed my paper touched on this and highlighted the fact that doing so would make my argument that much stronger. My peers also stressed the importance of generalizing the essay and Turkle’s piece to the entirety of the world, not just Americans or American children, as in my first draft I had dedicated her studies and my opinions to Americans. This assumption that I had made in doing so creates a disconnect in a world where the issue of technology is worldwide. I think the best comments/suggestions that I had provided my peers was to make sure that each paragraph had a clear and concise topic sentence. I found that in the papers that I read that either lacked a topic sentence or did not have clear topic sentences, the flow of the overall essay was choppy, and the paragraph was hard to follow. I think that the in-person discussion made for important conversations and allowed for clarification to be made on what comments we had made about each other’s papers. For example, my thesis in my first draft was contradictory and my peers commented on that. But the discussion allowed them to explain their thinking and show me the changes they would make.
I see peer review as a very interesting tool when it comes to educational writing. When you begin an essay, it can be difficult to start to apply thoughts and form accurate descriptions of what you want to get across. Sometimes the infamous writers block can put an essay on hold for what seems like forever, and concentration on the topic of the paper can veer of course. This is a great first step in making sure the paper you are writing comes across as clearly as possible without missing the critical points. But this is only one perspective of the information, and sometimes a single perspective can actually hurt the ideas and message that is intended. Having a peer review session offers the original writer the opportunity to see a second and third opinion and perspective of how someone would digest the information. This step in writing a paper can enhance that information greatly.
The peer review session our group had was very informative and helped clear up some topics and areas of each of our papers. We went through each section of the paper and broke down how we could adjust the information presented, either minor changes to wording or addition to some parts helped clarify the message. The in-person conversation aspect was very helpful, as it added an element of concern from each person that put their own effort into reading the papers. Instead of just some colored pen marks that may not make sense to the reader, the ability to hear each person explain their thoughts on each section was very informative.
I think some of the best comments for global recommendations I got for my essay we about being concise in what I wanted to talk about through my essay. I had to better explain both of the sides of the coin that I sat on, both agreeing and disagreeing with many of the points that Sherry Turkle made throughout her own essay. Solidifying this within my thesis helped a ton with making it clear what I thought about the matter.
The best advice I could give for any of my peers’ essays was to always use more “I”. This essay is about you, about the writer’s experience with technology and how they responded to Turkle. It was cool to maybe see references to other people or places and a lot of Turkle’s own opinions, but I’m really reading this essay to know YOUR opinion. I told them to try to find experiences from their own lives, things that were commonplace for them, and to put it into context in the essay, using it as a tool to help the reader see your point of view. In my essay, I talked about how Turkle looks at this issue with a certain tint of rose-colored glasses, looking back at the “good ole’ days”, back when technology wasn’t around. So, what was your (as the writer of the essay)’s? How does this problem look from your own life? Your childhood? How does it affect you? That was the best advice I could ever offer.
During the writing process, I found the most helpful comments made for me were the ones referencing the use of “I say” in my essay. I found this to be the most helpful to me because without using “I say”, I did not have much feedback coming from me. This also was helpful for me because it increased the number of words in my essay by a lot, making it easier to finish my essay. I do not think I offered my peers the best suggestions. Most of the comments I am good at finding or identifying are grammatical errors or run-on sentences. So, with that being said I am not good at finding errors like how well a thesis is constructed or things like that. I still feel as though my comments were helpful to my peers, but I probably could have done a better job with them. We did not discuss many of the errors that pertained to spacing and condensing sentences. I thought this might have been a good thing to bring up because I feel as though that if you can not convey your thoughts concisely or at least in an organized manner, then your audience will not understand you. Another thing not brought up was grammatical errors. I also find that these small fixes can be very beneficial to you in the long run. These are helpful because small mistakes like that could cost you a point or so on your essay where there was no need to take points off.
The in class peer review discussion was a major part of the revision of my essay. It helped make my paper so much stronger. My peers helped me find a bunch of tiny and big mistakes in my paper. There were little things like grammar mistakes. However they also helped me introduce my quotes and paragraphs much better. A major thing for me was creating strong topic sentences to introduce the point of the paragraph and not just starting with the quote. Some of my sentences could have been structured better to make my paragraph stronger. For example, like the placement of my sentences. My peers had also suggested shortening or breaking up the quotes throughout my paragraphs. After talking through my essay and discussing things I could do better or fix was very helpful for me to understand where to start revising. After the discussion, taking their feedback helped make my paper flow much better. For my peers’ essay we talked about connecting their paragraphs together to have more of a flow. Another thing that helped their essay was connecting the points back to the thesis statement. We all mutually felt like we had to add more analysis to all of our papers to help strengthen our points. The more we elaborate on Turkle’s evidence, the stronger our papers would be. We were able to have a good conversation and talk through each other’s papers which was beneficial.