The fourth learning outcome of English 110 states that students should “be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process.”
Prior to this course, I was never taught to emphasize the peer-review portion of the writing process. So, when we were told to revise the First Essay of our peers the way we have in the past, I did not know the important difference between local and global revision. However, approaching peer-review for my second essay was different since I began to understand the process more completely. For the first essay, I made a lot of comments with no set organization. I made global and local revisions, I just did not know to separate them that way. An example of a comment that focused on a global issue of a peers essay shows that I knew how to make these type of suggestions, I just did not know how to classify them:
“I don’t think that in your introduction you mentioned in the “I say” claim that you are taking a stance with one author or the author, so I think it might confuse readers when they get here.”
Ouellette, Comment on Emily Shannons Paper (Rough Draft, Essay 1).
Here, I point out that the peer is not allowing themselves a voice, which will be an error that may carry out through their essay. I wrote this on the first read-through of their paper. Although it is a valid comment, I did not think of it as “global,” although I did recognize it to affect the rest of her essay. When commenting on a different peers draft for Essay Two, I thoughtfully placed local revisions on my first read-through,
“This sentence begins with, “With,” and is broken up by “Are.” In my opinion, you would need a comma after citizenship and then begin the second half with “They.” However, I think if you restructured this sentence it would make more sense.”
Ouellette, Comment on Matt Places Paper (Rough Draft, Essay 2).
then emphasizing more global issues of the essay when I had finished reading it. I address their thesis and connect the messages of their body paragraphs to this thesis. This helps my peer to be exposed to ideas and angles of my own potential approaches to the prompt, and allows them to recognize how the overall organization of their essay successfully, or unsuccessfully, supports their thesis.
I came to find that peer review of essays does not only benefit the peer whose paper is being reviewed. Commenting on others’ papers also supports my own revision process. Not only does it give me a different perspective to view the prompt through, it also allows me to reflect on similar mistakes that I tend to make in my own paper.
Learning how to focus on revising local errors before addressing global ones in my peers papers has affected my writing process as well. I tend to leave myself comments on my paper as I am writing it that address local errors. Then, on my first read-through of the essay, I correct these sentence-level mistakes. Although they are on a smaller scale, they can have a great impact on the overall purpose and organization of the paper. I found this is in editing my peers papers, and applied it to mine. After I correct the errors that I initially see on my first read, I go back through and correct the larger, paragraph-level errors.
This is how I approached the draft of my second essay. One of the most significant edits I made to the rough draft was rewording my thesis by setting off my ideas with a semicolon. This sentence-level revision affected the global revision of my entire essay, which I address in the first section of this project, “Learning Outcome 1.”
Emily Shannon; ESSAY 2, Rough Draft:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i577hH-Rk288Y7jDPeL8MiM0aDMOj61r6iGocD5-rfc/edit
Matt Place; ESSAY 2, Rough Draft:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m0e2YjgU8Vc4lhI7tu9tVt380ckRkySyzmC2un9BBT4/edit
