Blog Post 3

In the video What is Peer Editing and the slideshow Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial, both explains that a peer is someone of your own age and editing is making suggestions, comments, compliments, and changes to writing. With both of these being stated, the definition for peer editing is working with someone of your own age-usually a classmate- to help improve, revise, and edit his or her writing. When peer editing, you need to keep in mind the three steps: 1. Compliments, 2. Suggestions, and 3. Corrections. While doing these three steps, be positive! Remember, you are helping improve someones work, how would you feel if someone were telling you how to improve your work? Also, be specific! When you're giving suggestions or corrections, make sure you tell what sentence or word could be changed. Don't just say "I think you should say this," you need to say, "Maybe instead of this sentence, you could say this." When making suggestions think about these areas: word choice (Did the author choose interesting words?), using details (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling), organization (Can you understand what the author is trying to say?), sentences (Are the sentences too long or too short?), and topic (does the author stick to the topic or talk about things that don't really fit?). And for corrections make sure to check for spelling and grammar mistakes, missing punctuation, and incomplete or run-on sentences. So, remember, stay positive (try to make suggestions and corrections in a positive way), be specific (give the author specific ideas on how to improve his or her writing), and complete ALL 3 steps (compliments, suggestions, and corrections). If you do all these you will be very effective at peer editing!

The video Writing Peer Review:Top 10 Mistakes is too funny. This video consist of young students' showing us how NOT to be a peer editor. There is Picky Patty, who points out the tiniest details. For example, she tells her classmate that half a centimeter of the title is not underlined and that there is too much space between her comma and the next word. Picky Patty doesn't care about the process. Next we have Whatever William. His partner is sharing with him ideas that he could use to improve his paper, and he says whatever to it all. Then we have Jean the Generalizer. She tells her partner somethings that he could change, but she isn't specific as to where the changes need to be made. Next is Mean Margaret. She doesn't know how to put words kindly and makes her partner feel bad. Off-Task Oliver is next, and his partner is trying to give him valuable advice for his paper, but he cannot concentrate on the paper. Last we have Defensive Dave. Dave's partner is trying to be helpful, but Dave takes offense to everything. When being a peer editor we must always remember to compliment the good things in the paper, and make suggestions and corrections in a positive way, while also being specific. We don't need to be to picky, we don't need to speed through and not be specific, we don't need to be mean about it, and we definitely do not need to be defensive. Remember our peers are trying to help us become better writers, we need their criticism!