Really Responding - Samantha Held

1)  This text surprised me because I was not expecting it to be about peer reviewing. When the title, Really Responding, was said in class I assumed the passage was going to be about responding to emails and texts. I found it interesting how a reviewer should not be too harsh nor too generous while reviewing a paper. I never knew how to accurately review a paper. If it was a friend's paper I did not want to be too harsh and if it were a stranger's paper I was always conflicted on how to peer review it.

2) After reading this text, I feel more confident on how to accurately peer review a paper. The examples helped clarify where remarks should be placed on the paper, how many to leave, and the tone in which the reviewer should respond. The strategy the stuck out the most to me was where to leave comments. I think that it is a good idea to leave comments within the margins so that a "moment-by-moment reading of the paper" can be done, and that it is not a good idea to place comments within the text of the paper because that is not the reviewer's place to write. I also think that it is smart to leave at the end of the essay so that remarks about the work as a whole can be given. Moreover, I found it interesting on how to sound when writing a review. I normally would make general statements such as "good" and "fix grammar," but I now realize that those statements are not not specific enough and need to be further explained. The text explained that I should "not sound like a teacher," but should fully explain my comments.

3) I have done peer reviews in the past. My experiences with peer reviews have normally been negative. I never knew how to sound while I was writing them because I did not want to sound too much like a teacher, but I wanted help the person who wrote the paper. In the past I wrote the comments along the margin and concluded with a general comment of the paper as a whole, so I felt reassured knowing that is the correct placement of them. Also, the people who would review my paper typically wrote a few comments that would help improve my paper and the rest would be too basic to do any good.