1. Quote three specific pieces of feedback (not the whole response, just parts of a response) that you received on your work that were particularly helpful to you in revising.
- The most helpful comment that I received was one from Whitney on my poem. I knew that one part didn’t sound right but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Here’s what she wrote; “I wonder what I will do when I can’t remember a thing,
Will I talk, laugh, sing, love – the things I do today?” I think maybe you could ask I wonder how I will act when I can’t remember a thing
Will I love the things I love today – to talk laugh love and sing. I did what she suggested and my poem sounds much better. - A comment about my e-mail exchange surprised me. Meridith wrote, “The only thought I have is to maybe convey some more emotion through the wife, so the reader can better understand how this is affecting her.” I understood what she was saying and revised the e-mails with her comment in mind.
- Whitney and Meridith had the same comment for the power point presentation, “My only suggestion is to maybe add some pictures.” I hadn’t thought of this before but I think it’s a good idea after seeing the others, and I am going to try to do that.
2. Quote three specific pieces of feedback (not the whole responses, just parts of a response) that you gave to someone else that you believe were most likely helpful to them in revising their own work.
- A comment that I wrote to Erica about her poem said, “In the second section of the poem “Don’t change my routine” is added at the end. I think another section that refers to the routine would be great and would give more explanation about that.” It was something that I felt I would like to hear more about as I read her poem and I thought maybe others would feel the same way.
- Another comment that I wrote to Erica was concerning her e-mail exchange. “In Julie Tweel’s response she was explaining what pragmatics is and then in the same sentence began writing what children with autism don’t do pragmatically…”appropriate eye contact, intentional communication (where there is an intention to communicate with another), initiating conversation or responding to the initiation of others, RIGHT HERE- lack of using language in a purposeful way, doesn’t share attention to an object, – ENDS THERE maintaining appropriate distance, being able to use and read appropriate body language, and so on”. You might want to take a look at this.” I was a little confused when I read it and was trying to help as best I could by giving specific and clear feedback.
- I read Whitney’s poem and felt that some of the lines were expressing the same thought but were separated with periods. This may seem like an editing revision because I’m talking about punctuation, but my goal was to express to her that I think certain lines should be connected because they share the same idea. My comment was, “I also think that maybe some lines could be connected with a comma such as lines 5 and 6 because I think they are expressing the same thought.”
3. Examine your examples for the first two items above and write about what this information tells you about the kind of peer responses you give.
- I think that in most of my reponses (not just the first two listed above) I am looking for clarity and flow as a reader. I tried to review my peers’ work as someone unfamiliar with what we are doing in this class and unfamiliar with the topics. I think I gave practical responses that didn’t intend to change the idea behind the work, but hopefully gave the writers information about what they can do to make their pieces easier to follow and understand.
4. Write a goal (behavioral objective) for yourself as a peer responder. Specifically, the next time you participate in a peer response group, what do you intend to do differently?
- As I looked at the repsonses that I gave to my classmates I found that many of them referred to mechanics rather than content . Although it’s very important to include things pertaining to grammar or punctuation, it’s often more useful to the author to receive comments on the content of their work. I’ll be sure to remember this in the future and comment on both, because I know how useful the comments about content were in revising my work.
