Intro. Lit Review. Connection Piece.

Intro:
Many times in school we're put in groups to discuss different ideas on our classmates writings, to try to improve each others writing, or simply revise grammar. Peer response has been a big role in students academic learning life. Peer response simply means classmates looking over each others writing while giving feedback to improve each others papers. Seeing how in this class we've mainly been working with peer response, and we've studied it and read over it made me wonder, is peer response and revision really effective? Are students actually learning through peer response? I certainly believe it has taught me in a much deeper and rather effective way. When I revise or my peers revise my writing by going over it and pointing out flaws and correcting or simply giving new ideas, I believe I get a better understanding of the writing and how it can be approached. Nancy Sommer’s Article “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” is a perfect example of how self revision is effective, yet not much students are experienced in this or simply don’t do it correctly. On the other hand Diana George’s "Working with Peer Groups in the Composition Classroom." and Gillam’s “Research in the Classroom: Learning through Response” are example’s of what peer response/revision can do for students. This can take a revision assignment to a higher level of thinking and learning. When students are made to revise each other’s work, they are rhetorically and thoughtfully expanding their minds to create much better writing while getting experience from other writers. To prove how effective peer response really is, I thought of having two types of experiments. One being surveys in which students are asked how they are handling peer response and peer revision, the second experiment would be interviewing english professors who use or don’t use peer response and revision in their teaching structures. This can represent how effective (or not effective) peer response/revision is.

Lit Review:
Nancy Sommers in her article writes about revision and how experienced writers use the method of revision for making improvement in writing. I plan on bringing up this article and comparing it to peer response and peer revision. If Sommers is all about revision and going over work, wouldn’t it make sense to go over more than one paper to improve your writing. would going over peers writing improve your writers. When going over someone else’s writing, we gain experience that most of the time improve our own writing. In Diana Georges article she is all for working in peer groups in composition classes. She gives more depth on how teachers role in peer groups is helpful. And also how teacher’s should encourage peer response, while still being involved as a “facilitator”. I will use this source for proof of my theory. Diana George’s article is more focused on the teacher’s role in peer response. She says how it is still necessary to have a teacher that is well prepared to handle group work yet still not taking over control, and letting students drive their discussions. Gillam will be the one source which will be able to take my writing of project two to a much deeper meaning. Gilliam not only says that peer response can help students writing, but she brings the idea of “metacognition”, which is learning about learning and knowing about knowing; using strategies that can solve a problem. When students are revising and responding to each others work, they learn to control their own thinking process. They learn how they take in text and makes it easier yet more challenging in a positive way to write better papers. “the believing game” from Elbow from Gillams article is the way we should think as far as peer response learning. We must “trust students capacity to learn from one another and for themselves” If we all believe, we call all achieve.

Connection Piece:

All of my three articles in some way connect to my writing study interest which in this case is peer response/revision. Nancy Sommers article talks about a general revision and how all students either experienced or new students should use revision in their writing. I completely agree with this idea, but by taking it a step further and having peer revision, writing can be far more interesting. In Diana Georges article, she focuses her idea on how peer group works well for composition classes, this is exactly what my idea is about peer group and peer response go hand in hand for me. If students work in groups, they will naturally help each other. A perfect way to take that to the next level would be by peer response. Giving feedback from student to student is a great way to learn new ideas and experiences which in the end is what writing is about. My last article is Gillam, she says that students who revise other students work not only create better writing, but also learn to control how they think and what they think learning wise. I mostly agree with GIllams article, it just makes sense to me. Students learn so much more by revising each other’s paper. After all we all learn from mistakes. Wouldn’t it make sense to revise?

Methodology:

I am doing two forms of research. One is quick surveys while the on the other hand is a more elaborate and intricate interviews. I will be doing surveys to students that are or have taken an english class. This survey consists of four basic questions. They will provide me with feedback that will be able to prove or not prove my theory and see how really effective peer response is. The other one is doing surveys to professors. This i will get to sit with them and actually see what they personally think of peer response. If they actually use it or what exactly they think this helps or does not. These two forms of experiments will provide good feedback on to further develop and even prove my theory. Getting actual conversations and answers from people that experience peer response in first hand will greatly benefit me into looking how exactly peer response is being done and how effective this is.