"Really Responding"- Acadia Bravo

•   How did this text surprise you?

 Off the bat, this text surprises me with the style and point of view in which the first paragraphs are written, which is informal and almost like a train of thought from a student who has the responsibility of peer reviewing a paper. Especially coming from a professor who taught at Florida State, it is a little comforting seeing someone who you may deem to always write in complete, formal sentences with elevated diction all the time to be able to write as casually as this and accurately depict how many students feel when asked to perform this task.

• ·         Do you think the strategies in this text can help in peer review? Mention two that stuck out to you and discuss your opinion on them.

    The strategies in this text can most definitely help in the peer review as far as how to approach the situation, especially for one that hasn’t done one before. Reading this for me helped, where Straub was talking about focusing on only a few points instead of nit picking every single little point. This stuck out to me because I am extremely guilty of focusing on grammatical errors and spelling issues and often I find that instead of truly getting my point across about bigger things that need tending to I tend to focus on the little things. Looking at that and realizing that I do that will hopefully help in future peer reviews. Another point I found Straub hit on the head at least in my opinion was going through a mental checklist before reviewing the paper. Something that provides a block for me personally is putting my mind in the context of the piece as far as the tone, style, formality, whether it is a rough draft versus a final draft, etc.

• ·         Have you done peer review in the past? If so, has that experience been positive or negative and why?

    I have done peer reviews in the past and they have been both a mix of positive and negative experiences. Some of the positive experiences have been when I have truly understood the prompt and when the writing from the person I reviewed had a proper flow and understanding of what they were writing about, those reviews I was able to go a little more in depth about structural concepts such as clarifying theme. The more negative experiences have derived from people who didn’t have a clear understanding of the prompt and had atrocious grammar because I mentally could not get past their simple grammar errors, especially as I have progressed into higher levels of English classes.