Week 7: Peer Reviewing

This week, we read and talked about a very interesting topic in class. The article we read is titled, "To Give is Better than to Receive." We learned that peer review can be very beneficial to improving your writing. Surprisingly, giving others feedback, rather than receiving feed back, can be even more beneficial. On Tuesday, we peer reviewed our group members' Rhetorical Analysis Detailed Outline. We were instructed to carefully critique each point and find areas in which the person we were reviewing could improve in. This activity really benefited me because it made me think of my own outline and areas in which I could improve in. By being strict on my group mates, when I looked back at my own outline, I found that there were many areas in my outline that I could improve on. It was also useful to listen to comments from my group mates about my outline because the writer himself often overlooks some critical errors when reviewing himself.

The peer review online at Connect was also very helpful. There were many things that we had to look for within our peers' essays so it gave me a lot of things to think about in my own essay. While making comments in Connect about where my peers were lacking, I realized that I was lacking in the same areas. For example, I saw that I did not introduce my quotes well enough. I should be telling the readers where the quotes come from and who I am quoting. By introducing the author of the quote and explain why he or she is credible, I make my argument more effective and persuasive. In addition, it was good to see what my peers had to say about my essay. Interestingly, many of their comments were about things that I realized I was lacking while I was peer reviewing their essays.

Right now, in this class, we are working on both the RA essay and the RIP Video Project. However, at this point, they are both drafts, which means that they will need revisions. For the RA Essay, I have to make sure I show that the quotes I have are credible. In addition, I need to make my thesis show how the difference in rhetorical situations affect the fairy tale convention instead of just stating that there is a difference. Lastly, I need to make my essay flow better by using better transitions to make each paragraph connected to each other.

As for the RIP Video Project, we will need to make the script shorter so that our video is shorter than five minutes. In additon, we will need to make the video as interesting as possible, such as adding sound effects. Lastly, we need to tie in more analysis about the rhetorical situation into the video; we need to include this without making the video choppy. We do not want it to come off as if we are randomly talking about the tale's rhetorical situation.