Patch #39 – a nugget of reflection

A response to the Thought Vectors and Nuggets Activity
created by jill jones (@teacherlyjill)

Number of views: 350


“Once revised papers are submitted to the instructor for final grading purposes, most technical errors will be eliminated and the content is typically stronger. With mechanical and grammatical mistakes minimized, instructors can now concentrate more freely on the task of judging each paper’s content in the general absence of distracting technical errors.”

**Professors of Writing: wouldn’t it be great if peer review eliminated all the mechanical errors in a piece of writing and all you needed to do is grade for ideas/content/arrangement?

This quotation is a lovely thought but idealistic because it makes two assumptions: (1) that all the mechanical errors are simple (maybe even, typos) and (2) that all students have a strong understanding of writing in English. The notion of the peer review, or the colleague swap as Mayo calls it, is complicated when the students are new English language learners (NELL).

If you’re interested in peer review, find all my thoughts on my blog.