Peer Review: Writing and Students' Engagement*

In Peer Review: Writing and Students' Engagement, Richard J. Light, reports on a student who in her senior discovered the value of peer review. In this excerpt, the brief description of the rules of the group are telling and useful:

The friend told her that, at the newspaper, editors criticize one another's writing ruthlessly. Relentlessly. For many student writers, this tough but constructive criticism is a high point of working on the Crimson. The friend suggested that the woman enlist several other friends to serve as a writers' consulting group.

She did it. She and three others began to meet whenever any of them had a substantial writing assignment and wanted to discuss it. The group had only two rules. First, the person who wanted feedback on the paper had to have at least a second draft. Second, the other three students were not allowed to do any word-by-word editing and fixing.

They met approximately once a week. Each of the four students had about six long papers to write in their senior year, giving them twenty-four papers to discuss. The woman called this group her "turning point." She said it was by far her most time-consuming obligation at college, yet of all her activities it was the most valuable. She wouldn't have considered missing a meeting. Her enthusiasm was obvious as she told about the impact of this working group on her writing. For her, work that was once frustrating had become a pleasure.

The above article is excerpted from "The Most Effective Classes" in Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds by Richard J. Light, pp. 54-62, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Two other useful tidbits from the excerpt for teachers who assign writing are these:

1. Courses with writing assignments engage students more deeply than lecture/test courses. Writing with more than twenty pages total, with the writing done in several shorter papers and spread out over the semester are more engaging than the single 20 page term paper model.


2. Writing feedback where students perceive that the instructor feedback is too intrusive frustrates students. This is worth quoting from:

   The frustration occurs when a teacher seems to forget whose paper it is, and begins to change the voice of an essay from the student's voice to the teacher's voice. One young woman comments about a literature course: "The professor meant well and worked hard with me. I did many drafts. But she kept trying to force her perspectives into my essay. At the end I wanted to tell her that her revisions of my work read well, but now it was her paper, and that I was now ready to start over with a different topic to write my paper."

Note the difference in how student peer review groups worked and how teacher directed revisions can work. It's not that one is good and one is bad, but there's an interesting intersection sometimes between teachers beliefs about what makes writing right and good, and what kind of direction students need to get to that. The degree to which students can self-discover what is good and find their voices increases the likelihood that they'll become better writers. Sometimes you do have to prescribe rather describe and direct rather than suggest, but activities and practices that can encourage discovery are important.

One last thing about Light's research -- many students admit that they looked back fondly on first year writing courses in their junior and senior years, but at the time they were first year students, the courses weren't appreciated. However, once students are in their majors and writing more in and around topics they have come to care about and have a developing intellectual stake in, writing becomes more important to them. And it's at that point that a lot of the lessons first year courses had sought to impart come back into use.