How to Give Useful Peer Feedback
Throughout this article are 12 "tweetable takeaways." Click on a Twitter icon () to share one of Lydia's peer review tips.
Giving and getting peer feedback on drafts can be an incredible tool for improving your writing, but only if that feedback is clear and specific about what to do next. Having someone say, “I liked it!” or “Well done!” can feel good for a moment, but it won’t help anyone improve.
Giving and getting peer feedback on drafts can be an incredible tool for improving your writing, but only if that feedback is clear and specific about what to do next. Having someone say, “I liked it!” or “Well done!” can feel good for a moment, but it won’t help anyone improve.
You also don’t have to “know
everything” to give helpful writing feedback; just be self-aware about your own
reading experience. The whole point of feedback is to just show the author what
a reader will see in a draft.
Is peer review part of your writing process? |
General Strategies
Find out what the author wants, but keep in mind you may see things
the author hasn’t considered yet, too.
Don’t give too much; don’t give too little. Sometimes it is not
helpful to point out every error and make suggestions on every line—this can be
overwhelming. Vague or incomplete feedback can be just as frustrating and can
feel like a waste of time.
Follow the golden rule. Give the kind of feedback that you would
like to get. That is, be respectful, constructive, thorough, and honest.
Trust yourself as a reader. If something is not clear to you, the
author probably needs to make it clearer. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense
because the author hasn’t made sense of it yet.
Content Critique versus Error Correction
You don’t need to be a grammar or APA expert to give worthwhile feedback. Address the big things first! For example, if you are reading over someone’s problem statement, it is probably more important that the author made sure you could understand the point than if he or she used a semicolon correctly. Focus on content and clarity before you
focus on mechanical errors, like typos or missing punctuation. Proofreading
concerns should come last unless they significantly interfere with a reader’s overall
understanding.
Thinking of Things to Say
Keep track of questions that
occur to you as you read. For example: How does this
point relate to the one before? What does this term mean? Is there a missing
word here?
Offer concrete suggestions
whenever you can. For example: This
paragraph might work better at the beginning. I was confused here—maybe a
subheading would make the transition clearer.
Examples of things to focus on in
a content critique:
- Organization (are things in a logical order?)
- Consistency/contradiction (does the author say the same thing throughout or seem to change his or her mind?)
- Focus (can you tell what the main ideas are, or is there a lot of extra information?)
- General clarity (make note of passages that don’t seem to make sense to you, either because the wording is confusing, there is not enough explanation, or you can’t tell how the information fits in to the main idea)
- Point out when authors do something well, too, and let them know why. For example: The obvious topic sentences really helped me follow your argument. The wording in this paragraph is clear and easy to understand. Explaining it this way is much better than in the earlier paragraph—now I know what you mean.
Don’t Get Stuck
If you can’t find something
positive to say about a draft, look at it from another perspective: The wording
is dense and hard for you to understand, but maybe you can really tell how
knowledgeable the author is about the topic. (When people have a lot to say, sometimes
it just takes a few drafts to make sure they say everything in the right
order.)
If you come across something you
just don’t understand, tell the author this, but also say what you think it means—sometimes when an author
hears a reader’s interpretation (or misinterpretation) of an idea, the author
can more easily figure out what to fix.
If you can’t find anything to
critique, focus on making sure the author knows why
what he or she did worked. Don’t just say “This is awesome!” Be specific: “I could
really tell how all the scholarly evidence fit together—the way you explained
things and gave examples was really helpful.”
Interpreting Feedback for Your Own Work
Try not to take it personally—you
are very close to your own writing and may think you have settled on the right
way to do things. What makes sense in your
head may not make sense in someone else’s.
Be grateful! Thoughtful feedback
takes time and mental energy. If someone has a lot of suggestions, don’t think
of it as “tearing your paper apart;” think of how many ways he or she is trying
to make it better.
You don’t have to follow every
suggestion, but keep an open mind. A fresh pair of eyes may catch something you
missed.
Getting #writing feedback: Don't take it personally, be grateful, & stay open-minded.
Giving and getting peer review feedback is an excellent way to develop your skills as a writer. We encourage you to join a writing community and/or find a writing partner to make peer review a regular part of your writing process.
Getting #writing feedback: Don't take it personally, be grateful, & stay open-minded.
Giving and getting peer review feedback is an excellent way to develop your skills as a writer. We encourage you to join a writing community and/or find a writing partner to make peer review a regular part of your writing process.
Practice: Find a draft of something you wrote a while ago. Pick something you haven’t written or read recently so that you have some distance from it. Take 10-15 minutes to read over and make comments on the draft, imagining you are giving feedback to a colleague on his or her work. What kinds of things do you notice? What suggestions for revision can you make?
Lydia Lunning is one of the editors in the Writing Center who conduct the final form and style review of all of Walden’s dissertations and doctoral studies. She was terrible at revising her own work until she joined a peer tutoring program in college.
Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
Love the article. I always get so annoyed, when people simply say: "Well done!" or "I liked it", because when I ask someone to give me a feedback I am actually waiting for an advice. However, it does not concern everybody - many of my colleagues actually get offended if one tells them anything but: "You did a great job!".
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lily! Good point - writers certainly have their own preferences as to the type and amount of feedback they prefer. We agree, though, that the "nice job!" type of sentiments on their own are not very constructive.
Delete