Peer Editing
Peer editing is a method in which students comment on preliminary drafts of each other's papers. It offers two major benefits:
- Students in the peer edit group receive ample feedback on their drafts, which enables them to do a thoughtful, informed revision of their paper-in-progress before submitting a final draft to the instructor.
- The individual editors get valuable editing practice which enables them to edit their own work better in the future. One of the best ways to improve as a writer--other than through practice, practice, practice!--is by consciously using the criteria of excellent writing to make judgments about what is good in a piece of writing and what is not and then applying those criteria to one's own work. Thus students in writing classes that employ peer editing regularly praise the practice highly, sometimes reporting it to be a class's most useful aspect.
Peer editing can take various forms. It can be as simple as a group of students sitting in a circle and taking turns at reading their papers aloud, with the listeners then providing oral feedback. Or it can involve each group member's taking the group's drafts home and providing extensive written commentary using an edit guide prepared by the instructor, commentary which is then discussed in a subsequent group meeting.
Initially, many students believe that they can't do peer editing. They may lack confidence in their writing ability and believe that they don't have the critical knowledge to give somebody else quality feedback. After all, we're not all English majors, right?
Right. But there are two distinctly different types of feedback, and only one may require English-major-type knowledge. The other does not, is valuable in its own right, and can provide the foundation for a solid, helpful peer response.