essay peer edit

How to Peer Edit an Essay: Free Peer Editing Checklist

If you want to peer edit an essay and are looking for some top tips, check out our free peer editing checklist.

The idea of editing and proofreading your own essays, let alone asking someone else to help, may be beyond comprehension. In fact, you may think your essay is pretty fantastic already.

If so, you’re deceiving yourself.

Don’t just settle for good . You should be looking for great.

But how do you achieve this?

The majority of students settle for good. That’s enough. It will get them through school.

But good isn’t enough for the top students. They aspire to be great. They aspire to be awesome.

How do YOU become awesome?

Get a friend to help.

To take an essay beyond the draft stage through a polished version, you need a peer editor. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a professional essay editor (although that will deliver the best results); it needs to be someone who will call you out and tell you how it really is.

When you’re looking for someone to peer edit your essay, try and choose someone who you know well and who you can trust to be honest and methodical. You’re not looking for someone who’ll tell you how great your essay is; you’re looking for someone who will provide you with an objective criticism of your paper.

The purpose of the exercise isn’t to tear you down; it’s to make you better.

So, once you’ve found the ideal peer editor, how can you get the most out of the exercise?

Hand them our handy tips and the great peer editing checklist.

If you wish to edit your essay before engaging the help of a peer editor, take a look at our guide to essay editing .

How to Peer Edit an Essay: Top Tips for Success

Peer editors should review an essay with the primary intention of offering advice on how it can be improved. Here are some great tips to make sure you do the task justice.

Ideally, read through the paper at least twice

During the first pass, you’ll familiarize yourself with the content of the essay and the primary arguments that are put forth. During the second pass, you’ll have a chance to readily understand what is being said. If you don’t understand the content after two readings; there’s a problem the writer needs to know about.

Position yourself as the target reader

While you’re in the process of peer editing the essay, take the role of the envisioned reader; i.e., the person who is reading the essay to learn from someone as opposed to being on the hunt for pesky grammatical errors. During the peer editing process, you should be concerned with content, organization, and style. If you focus purely on punctuation and spelling errors, you may not add a significant amount of value. Your role is to help the writer ensure the essay is clear and compelling.

Resist the temptation to fix the issues

Your job as a peer editor is not to take over and correct any issues that you identify; it’s to provide the writer with constructive feedback on how the paper can be improved.

Tell the truth… constructively

If you’re peer editing a friend’s essay, you may not want to hurt his or her feelings by pointing out areas where there is a lack of clarity. However, if you fail to do so, there’s no point in engaging in the process. Resist the urge to say everything is fine and instead focus on how you can help the writer learn someone from the process. Provide constructive feedback that highlights the positive areas of the essay while also pointing out some areas for improvement.

Provide specific details

Don’t provide sweeping statements such as, “I don’t understand your point.” Instead, provide very precise feedback on what exactly you don’t understand and what information may help you understand it better: “Perhaps you could make your point clearer by explaining why…” Take every opportunity to explain why you found something effective or ineffective.

Check the style guide

Universities and colleges typically follow one of six major style guides in academic writing: APA, Harvard, MHRA, MLA , OSCOLA and Oxford. When you write in a consistent manner following a recognised style guide, it is simpler for readers to understand what to anticipate and where to find further information. Effective application of a style in formal writing will distinguish your work visually and ensure you meet the university’s requirements. If you’re using APA, take a look at our guide to APA formatting .

The Three Pillars of Excellent Peer Essay Editing

Free peer editing checklist.

Download a free PDF version of our peer editing checklist by clicking on the image above. Here’s the full lowdown on what’s included.

Essay Introduction

• Does the essay begin with a clear, attention-grabbing statement or hook?
• Are there at least three sentences in the introduction?
• Does the writer make his or her intentions clear?
• Are you clear about what issue is being addressed in this essay?
• Is there a clear thesis statement?

See our guide to how to write an essay introduction for more help.

• Are there at least three body paragraphs?
• Does each body paragraph contain a clear topic sentence and idea?
• Does each body paragraph contain a conclusion statement that leads well to the next body paragraph?
• Does the conclusion contain at least three sentences?
• Does the conclusion refer back to the thesis statement?

Essay Flow and Coherence

• Do the ideas flow logically through the paper and contribute to a building argument?
• Have you used transitions correctly?
• Is the essay interesting?
• Does the analysis presented in the paper support the thesis statement?
• Is the sentence structure varied?

Essay Style and Mechanics

• Have you appropriately attributed and cited evidence?
• Have you cited each reference source according to the relevant style guide? If you’re using APA, take a look at our APA checklist .
• Is the paper formatted according to the relevant style guide?
• Are the references, tables, and figures formatted according to the relevant style guide?
• Have you proofread the paper? For a full proofreading checklist, take a look at our essay proofreading checklist.
• Misspelled words
• Grammatical mistakes
• Punctuation errors
• Run-on Sentences

So that’s our guide to how to peer edit an essay. Got anything to add? Please leave a comment.

4 thoughts on “How to Peer Edit an Essay: Free Peer Editing Checklist”

• Pingback: Editing an Essay the Easy Way in 2019
• Pingback: Peer Essay Editing Checklist | Essay Tips | How to Peer Edit an Essay www.vappingo.com/... - New Sites
• Pingback: Editing an Essay the Easy Way in 2020
• Pingback: How to Write an Essay Introduction: The Definitive Guide

Comments are closed.

Free Online Proofreader

Try our other writing services

Correct your document within 5 minutes

• Proofread on 100+ language issues
• Specialized in academic texts
• Corrections directly in your document

Instantly correct your entire document in minutes

Nobody's perfect all the time—and now, you don’t have to be!

There are times when you just want to write without worrying about every grammar or spelling convention. The online proofreader immediately finds all of your errors. This allows you to concentrate on the bigger picture. You’ll be 100% confident that your writing won’t affect your grade.

What does a proofreader do?

The proofreading process is your last chance to catch any errors in your writing before you submit it. A proofreader makes sure your spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors are reviewed and fixed. This can be done automatically by an AI-powered tool like the one at the top of this page or by a real human. Both options have their advantages, so pick the one that suits you most.

Fix mistakes that slip under your radar

✔ Fix problems with commonly confused words, like affect vs. effect, which vs. that and who vs. that.

✔ Catch words that sound similar but aren’t, like their vs. they’re, your vs. you’re.

✔ Check your punctuation to avoid errors with dashes and hyphens, commas, apostrophes, and more.

✔ Avoid sentence fragments, subject-verb agreement errors, and problems with parallelism.

How does the proofreader work?

The online proofreader.

It’s really straightforward. Just paste the text into the tool. All your errors will now be underlined in red. You can hover over these mistakes to see how they can be addressed. If you agree, just click on the button “Fix all errors,” and your mistakes will be fixed instantly! 

The professional proofreader

Upload your entire document first. Choose the pages you want proofread, the extra services you want to use, and the deadline. Then fill in some key details like your field of study so that we can find you the best proofreader. When you’re done, you pay for your order, and we make sure that your writing is checked by a proofreader. You’ll be contacted when the job is done!

Who should use this proofreader?

Avoid a bad grade and hand in your documents with absolute confidence.

Businesspeople

Look like a pro by writing error-free emails, reports, and more.

Ensure your work is clear and readable to increase the chance that it’ll get published.

Want your whole document checked and corrected in a matter of minutes?

Would you like to upload your entire document and check all your documents for 100+ language issues? Then Scribbr’s AI-powered proofreading is perfect for you.

With AI-powered proofreading, you can correct your text in no time.

• Upload document
• Wait briefly while all errors are corrected directly in your document
• Correct errors with one click

Proofread my document

Fantastic service!!

“Excellent review of a paper that was deciding my grade. I appreciate both the edits and the feedback to increase my knowledge of correct APA formatting and accurate citations. I needed the paper returned quickly, and the team worked hard to make sure I had what I needed. I just got my grade back, A+. I would 100% use this service again, it was worth every penny!!!!!!”

A proofreader for everyone

Don’t let typos and grammar keep you down. Make your writing count

Ask our team.

Want to contact us directly? No problem.  We  are always here for you.

• Email [email protected]
• Start live chat
• Call +1 (510) 822-8066
• WhatsApp +31 20 261 6040

Frequently asked questions

Our support team is here to help you daily via chat, WhatsApp, email, or phone between 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. CET.

Yes! Our personal statement editors can help you reduce your word count by up to 25%. You can choose to receive this feedback through direct edits or suggestions in comments – just select your choice when you upload your personal statement.

Our APA experts default to APA 7 for editing and formatting. For the Citation Editing Service you are able to choose between APA 6 and 7.

It is not necessary to reserve a time slot for your edit. As soon as your document is ready to be proofread, you can upload it at any time via our website . Based on your chosen deadline, our editor(s) will then proofread your document within 24 hours, 3 days, or 7 days.

If you are unsure about the availability of our services or are planning to upload a very large document (>13,000 words) with a 24 hour deadline, we recommend that you contact us beforehand via chat or email .

Scribbr is following the guidelines announced by the WHO (World Health Organization). As an online platform, all our services remain available, and we will continue to help students as usual.

Can I still place an order? Will my order be completed within the deadline? Yes, you can still place orders and orders will be delivered within the agreed upon deadline. Scribbr is an online platform – our proofreading & editing services are provided by editors working remotely from all over the world. This means Scribbr can guarantee that we will process your order with the same diligence and professionalism as always. The same holds true for our Plagiarism Checker .

Can I still contact customer support? Yes. Our support team is available from 09.00 to 23.00 CET and happy to answer any questions you might have!

Yes, if your document is longer than 20,000 words, you will get a sample of approximately 2,000 words. This sample edit gives you a first impression of the editor’s editing style and a chance to ask questions and give feedback.

How does the sample edit work?

You will receive the sample edit within 12 hours after placing your order. You then have 24 hours to let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

Read more about how the sample edit works

When you upload a large document (20,000+ words), we will ask your editor to send a sample edit of approximately 2,000 words as soon as possible. This sample edit gives you a first impression of your editor’s editing style and what you can expect from the service. You will receive it within 12 hours after uploading your order.

Why do we provide you with a sample edit?

We always aim to make you 100% happy, and Proofreading & Editing is a complex service. We want to make sure that our editing style meets your expectations before the editor improves your entire document.

Our editors are trained to follow Scribbr’s academic style . However, your preferences might deviate from our conventions. The sample edit gives you the chance to provide feedback – you can let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

Once your editor has completed your sample edit, you will receive a notification via email. You have 24 hours to reply to this email and provide us with feedback. If we receive your feedback in time, your editor will go the extra mile and adjust the edit according to your input.

What sort of feedback can you give?

Give us feedback that will help your editor meet your requirements. For example:

• “I am completely happy. The editor can continue editing like this.”
• “I forgot to mention that my school has the following rules for gendered pronouns.”
• “The editor changed the spelling of a technical term, but my professor spells it differently. Please keep the original spelling of this term.”

The  Structure  and Clarity Check can only be purchased in conjunction with Proofreading & Editing . Providing feedback on structure and clarity requires extensive knowledge of the text, which the editor acquires while proofreading and editing your text.

However, our Paper Formatting Service,   Citation Editing Service and Plagiarism Checker can be purchased separately.

Yes, Scribbr will proofread the summary in another language as well.

Who will proofread my summary?

If your document contains a summary in a different language, we will send this part to another editor who is a native speaker of that language. The editor will check your summary, applying our standard Proofreading & Editing service.

If you ordered any additional services, such as the Structure Check or Clarity Check, the editor will not apply them to your summary. This is because the summary is a translation of your abstract – you already receive Structure and Clarity feedback on the text in the original language. Therefore, when proofreading your summary, the editor will focus on making sure your language and style is correct.

How does it work?

We will create a new assignment within your order and send you a confirmation email. This also means that you will receive a separate email/SMS notification from us when the editor has finished proofreading your summary. Once your summary is proofread, you can download it via your Scribbr account and read the editor’s feedback.

Yes, we can provide a certificate of proofreading.

As soon as the editor delivers the edit, you can email us at [email protected] to request a certificate.

Please indicate the following in your email:

• Your order number
• Your full name
• The title of your work

We will create a PDF certificate and email it to you as soon as possible.

Scribbr specializes in editing study-related documents . We proofread:

• PhD dissertations
• Research proposals
• Personal statements
• Admission essays
• Motivation letters
• Reflection papers
• Journal articles
• Capstone projects

Yes, when you accept all changes and delete all comments your document is ready to be handed in.

How to accept all changes:

• Word for Mac 2011

How to remove all comments:

When you’ve finished this, others will no longer be able to see the changes made by the editor.

• Read your last version one last time to make sure everything is the way you want it.
• Save your document as a .pdf file to come across more professional and to ensure the format of your document doesn’t change.

Yes, in the order process you can indicate your preference for American, British, or Australian English .

If you don’t choose one, your editor will follow the style of English you currently use. If your editor has any questions about this, we will contact you.

Yes, you can upload your thesis in sections.

We try our best to ensure that the same editor checks all the different sections of your thesis. When you upload a new file, our system recognizes you as a returning customer, and we immediately contact the editor who helped you before.

However, we cannot guarantee that the same editor will be available. Your chances are higher if

• You send us your text as soon as possible and
• You can be flexible about the deadline.

Please note that the shorter your deadline is, the bigger the risk that your previous editor is not available.

If your previous editor isn’t available, then we will inform you immediately and look for another qualified editor. Fear not! Every Scribbr editor follows the  Scribbr Improvement Model  and will deliver high-quality work.

However, every editor has a slightly different editing style, so you may notice small inconsistencies in editing choices. As with every proofreading order, be sure to carefully review your editor’s changes and suggestions as you finalize your text to ensure that everything is as you want it.

The fastest turnaround time is 12 hours.

You can upload your document at any time and choose between four deadlines:

At Scribbr, we promise to make every customer 100% happy with the service we offer. Our philosophy: Your complaint is always justified – no denial, no doubts.

Our customer support team is here to find the solution that helps you the most, whether that’s a free new edit or a refund for the service.

Every Scribbr order comes with our award-winning Proofreading & Editing service , which combines two important stages of the revision process.

For a more comprehensive edit, you can add a Structure Check or Clarity Check to your order. With these building blocks, you can customize the kind of feedback you receive.

You might be familiar with a different set of editing terms. To help you understand what you can expect at Scribbr, we created this table:

View an example

Scribbr not only specializes in proofreading and editing texts in English , but also in several other languages . This way, we help out students from all over the world.

As a global academic writing proofreading service, we work with professional editors  – all native speakers – who edit in the following languages :

This way, you can also have your academic writing proofread and edited in your second language!

Please note that we do not offer Finnish proofreading, but students can still upload English papers on scribbr.fi .

Yes, regardless of the deadline you choose, our editors can proofread your document during weekends and holidays.

Example: If you select the 12-hour service on Saturday, you will receive your edited document back within 12 hours on Sunday.

The footnotes are not automatically included in the word count.

If you want the language errors in your footnotes to be corrected by the editor, you can indicate this in step 3 of the upload process . The words in the footnotes are then automatically added to the total word count.

Need help with your references?

• If you use the APA reference style, you can use our free APA Citation Generator or the articles about APA in our Knowledge Base.
• If you’d like us to check your references for consistency, you can use our Citation Editing Service .

To keep our prices competitive, we do not offer a free trial edit. However, if your document is longer than 30,000 words, we are happy to provide you with a sample edit of 2,000 words to ensure you are satisfied with the editor’s editing style.

Rest assured, our customers are very satisfied with our proofreading services. We’re proud that they have rated us with an excellent 4.6 on Trustpilot. In the unlikely event that you have a less positive experience, we’ll solve that with our 100% happiness guarantee !

After your thesis has been edited , you will receive an email with a link to download the edited document.

The editor has made changes to your document using ‘ Track Changes ’ in Word.  This means that you only have to accept or ignore the changes that are made in the text one by one.

It is also possible to accept all changes at once. However, we strongly advise you not to do so for the following reasons:

• You can learn much by looking at what mistakes you have made.
• The editors do not only change the text, they also place comments when sentences or sometimes even entire paragraphs are unclear. We therefore advise you to read through these comments and take into account your editor’s tips and suggestions.
• Because of the many changes, sometimes there may be double spaces, double periods, or other minor mistakes in a sentence. Checking the changes one by one, you can easily detect these minor errors.

We have written a manual in which we explain step by step how ‘Track Changes’ works.

Check out an example

Our editors are very experienced and will do their utmost to correct all errors in your thesis .

However, with our current rates, an editor can only check your thesis once. This may cause an editor to overlook an error. We can therefore not guarantee that your thesis is 100% error free after you have had your thesis edited.

The editor uses ‘Track Changes’ in Word when editing your thesis.

Don’t know how this works? Then read the following guide  in which we explain step by step how ‘Track Changes’ works.

No, we do not provide you with a clean copy. You will always receive a file edited with tracked changes .

We do this for two main reasons:

• In most papers, there are sentences that the editor cannot edit without additional information from the author. In these cases, your editor will provide guidance but leave you to implement the feedback. If we were to simply accept the changes for you, then these issues would be left unaddressed.
• We believe students should be accountable for their work. Our editors can correct language errors and coach you to be a better writer. However, the end product belongs to you and should reflect your ideas and decisions.

All Scribbr editors are language experts with interests in different subject areas.

You can indicate your field of study when you upload your document . We’ll make sure that the editor who proofreads your work is familiar with your discipline and its specialist vocabulary.

These are the fields of study you can choose from, and examples of the main subjects in each field:

• Business and Management: Business Administration, Hotel Management, Accountancy, Marketing
• Economics: Business Economics, Econometrics, Finance
• IT and Engineering: ICT, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Industrial Design, Electrical Engineering
• Natural and Life Sciences: Biomedical Sciences, Biology, Chemistry
• Geography, Agriculture and Environment: Ecology, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Urban Planning
• Health and Medical Sciences: Medicine, Obstetrics, Pharmacy, Nutrition, Dentistry
• Arts and Humanities: Philosophy, History, Literature, Cultural Studies, Theology
• Law and Policy: Law, Political Science, Public Policy, Human Rights
• Social and Behavioral Sciences: Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication Sciences

Editors don’t have to be experts in the content of your paper, but they do know how to present it in the best way possible! Our goal is to improve your writing and give you feedback on the readability, structure, logic, and clarity of your text. We know from experience that the most effective editors are specialists in language and academic writing.

We’ve carefully selected and trained all of our editors to proofread theses and other academic documents. Once they’re qualified, we continue to carefully monitor their work to make sure we always deliver the highest quality .

• Our Mission

A Framework for Teaching Students How to Peer Edit

Giving meaningful feedback on a peer’s work doesn’t come naturally to students. Try these tips to help students hone their editing skills.

Too often, asking students to edit each other’s writing results in superficial commentary. Many students are uncertain about how to provide meaningful feedback on a peer’s work. 

One way to make peer review more effective is by scaffolding it, or breaking down the practice into several classes where students critique each other’s work in a more focused, incremental manner. Scaffolding allows students to identify and address a single type of error in an allotted time period. While it is a valuable process for all students, it is especially useful for English-language learners and learning-support students, who benefit from breaking tasks and information into more manageable components. 

Deconstruct Constructive Criticism

Students need to learn how to give and receive criticism in a productive and respectful manner. Before embarking on a class-wide peer review activity, teachers might underscore the importance of responses that are forthright and civil. Mastering the art of giving valuable feedback that doesn’t offend will benefit students in nearly every professional and personal relationship they maintain. 

Start by breaking down the two words: constructive and criticism . What do these words mean by themselves? What synonyms might apply to each word? Ask students to think of examples of ways they might offer constructive criticism on a peer’s writing. They can be as simple as “Remember to capitalize proper nouns” or “Restate your thesis in your final paragraph.” Underscore to students that the criticism must be specific and helpful. “Good job!” doesn’t suffice. Write their responses on one or two poster boards, and place them where students can see them and refer back to them throughout the process. 

Provide samples of criticism for students to emulate. You may want to advise learners to attach positive feedback with constructive criticism. For example, “Your hook poses a good question, but it contains several grammar errors” or “You inserted this quotation correctly.” 

As there is no definitive guide to constructive criticism, teachers and students are encouraged to discuss what constitutes responsible feedback to find a definition and standards that best suit the class.

Set Clear Plans

In the same way that instruction often demands that educators create the assessment first, teachers should prepare for the peer review at the beginning of any writing assignment. A scaffolded peer review can be time-consuming, so consider the length of the writing assignment to be assessed when making a determination about the class time required. 

Before assigning writing, consider what writing skills you want your students to learn, review, or practice. The objectives will vary by class, and they should be articulated to students from the outset. Some teachers may have the class focus on writing an effective thesis, incorporating quotations, or adding in-text citations. In other classes, the objective may be reviewing capitalization or comma usage. Identify the skills that students are expected to practice writing and finding in each other’s papers.

Facilitate the Process

Scaffolding the peer review provides an opportunity for students to read a piece multiple times to assess different elements of writing. First the class reviews the objective as a whole group. Then peer pairs review their individual writing with a focus on the defined learning objective. 

Some students may be reluctant to criticize peers’ work. Consider choosing peer-review partners instead of letting the students pick. This might cut down on students’ being fearful of offending their friends. Also, if the debrief period is generating little discussion, ask students to debrief with their partners as opposed to in front of the class. Give students a set of debrief prompts to focus their discussion, such as “Discuss the corrections you made.” 

Encourage students to refer to the posters regarding constructive criticism examples, especially if someone has given an impolite criticism. 

Debrief as a Class

After the pair reviews, debrief by discussing the findings as a class. The debrief can be an open-ended session in which the teacher encourages students to ask questions and voice misunderstandings about both writing and critiquing. The debrief can also be more structured and incorporate specific questions, such as “What is a challenge an editor or peer reviewer might face?” or “What is one element of your writing you wish to improve upon?” The debrief can also take the form of a small writing assignment, such as a reflective paragraph on the peer review process in which students summarize what they have learned as an editor and proofreader.

We want our students to be proficient writers and thinkers. Reviewing a peer’s work can help young people better understand the often difficult process of writing by challenging them to adopt a dynamic new role as critic.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

How to Peer Edit an Essay

By Georgina Roy

Peer to peer learning is very important for writers. Writers work alone, most of the time, and writers are highly sensitive about their own work. Sometimes, you might be put into a situation where you will have to peer edit an essay , probably in a school setting or as a part of a writing workshop. Also, if your friends are writers, you might be asked to peer edit not just an essay, but a larger piece of work as well, like a short story, a novella, and maybe even a novel.

Also, knowing how to peer edit an essay can help you edit your own work as well. There are three steps to follow when you are peer editing an essay, and we will get to them below, but first, let’s take a look at what peer editing actually means.

What is peer editing?

Peer editing refers to editing a piece of writing written by a person who is equal to you in skills and abilities, or age, or both. In a school setting, your peers are your classmates. If you’re attending a writers’ workshop , the same will apply. And once someone else’s writing finds its way to you for peer editing, you might be tempted to just jump in and edit their grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors and be done with it.

However, put yourself into the writer’s shoes: would you really be that worried about grammar and spelling error? Or, would you prefer to receive constructive feedback?

Constructive feedback is necessary with peer editing

Anyone can notice a few grammar and spelling errors. However, it will be your writer peers who will be able to give you constructive feedback. Receiving constructive feedback is what makes peer editing so beneficial to all writers. Constructive feedback contains two steps: complimenting the writer and offering suggestions.

When you’re complimenting the writer, you will point out everything that you believe the writer has done right. For example, you might compliment the topic of their essay, their word choice, the structure of the essay, and other things. This will have a positive effect on the writer. Remember, your goal is not to discourage the writer, but to offer constructive feedback. If you only focus on what should be improved – and if the first part of your feedback is focused on improvement – the writer might start feeling incompetent and defensive, which will have a negative effect and render the peer editing useless in the end.

The second step, which is offering suggestions, is also a delicate step. Here, you can point out what you think should be improved, but you must present this as an opinion in the form of a suggestion, instead of saying that the structure of the essay, for example, was completely wrong. Again, you don’t want to discourage the writer, you want to help them improve, but you’re not helping when you’re just pointing out what is wrong without offering suggestions on how that can be fixed.

These two steps are very important, and are easier to understand via examples. Below, we will take a look at each step and explain how it is done, as well as offer helpful tips for each.

Step one: Praising the writer and offering compliments

This step is supposed to be easy, right? Just read the essay, find the things that you like and tell the writer. Only, what happens when the essay is mostly badly written, needs a lot of improvements, and you cannot find anything to compliment the writer on?

For that reason, in the first step, you need to at least compliment the writer on the topic they’ve chosen, the opinion they’ve shared, and your favorite thing about the essay.

The topic: You can always compliment the author on the topic they’ve chosen. You can offer your opinion on it, and why you find the topic interesting. This will break the ice between yourself and the writer, and the writer will be more receptive to everything you will have to say after that. In comparison, if you begin by saying that you don’t really care for the topic, you will create a barrier between you two. Instead, if you’re not interested in the topic, you can tell the writer that you’re not very knowledgeable about it. You will prompt them to explain why they’ve chosen the topic, again, breaking the ice in a positive way, rather than creating a barrier.

Their opinion: Writers share their thoughts through their writing. If you agree with the opinions the writer shared in the essay, you should tell them so. Again, this will create a connection between you two, and the writer will not feel animosity towards you. However, if you disagree with their opinion, instead of saying that directly, you can say that their opinion is interesting, and ask them the reasons why they think that way. This will prompt a friendly discussion, rather than generate animosity.

Favorite part: Whether you are peer editing an essay, or a novella or a novel, always make sure to have a favorite part. The favorite part doesn’t necessarily have to be the best part of the essay, but, you definitely have to present it as such. The good news is that you can choose anything. It can be a specific word the writer has chosen, or it can be a phrase, or how they have described something. Remember, you should always tell the writer what your favorite part was because the writer will understand that you read their essay with care – and you enjoyed it enough to have a favorite part.

Things to remember about the first step:

• Always be positive;
• Use the highest praises you can – but remain realistic;
• Don’t compliment something you think should be improved;
• Your goal is to be positive and start the peer editing process on a positive note;
• Show interest into the topic and the writer’s opinions, even if you disagree;
• Enable the writer to tell you more about the topic, and they may even explain what their thoughts were as they were writing the essay;
• Always have a favorite part or thing about the essay.

Step two: Making suggestions

In this step, you will talk about things that need to be improved. This step is important because you need to be careful not to do some of the following things:

• Make the writer feel insecure;
• Insult or hurt them by being too harsh;
• Offer problems and not solutions;
• Use derogatory language that will generate negativity between you two.

It’s very easy to make peer editing a negative experience for the writer if you let go and be a very harsh critic. While it is advisable to offer as many suggestions as possible, focus first on the top three or four things the writer should improve upon, which will be your major suggestions, and then if you still find more things to improve, mention them in passing.

Here are a few examples of what you shouldn’t do:

• Don’t say, “I see a lot of room for improvement here.” This will make the writer feel as though their essay is not good at all and that it needs a lot of work. Instead, you can say, “I have a few suggestions that might help the essay read better.”
• At any point, do not say words that are negative. For example, do not say something like “The essay reads as if it was written by a child.” While that example is extreme, even the smallest negative word can have a very big negative effect.
• Do not tell the writer things they’ve done wrong. That’s what offering suggestions is all about. Instead of saying, “You’ve used the word good so many times it makes reading the essay boring,” you can say, “The word “good” appears a lot in this essay, don’t you think? Do you think you could use another word, like excellent, or great?”

Most importantly, do not offer problems without solutions. If you think that there is room for improvements, you need to suggest how the writer can do this. Don’t say things like, “The structure of your essay is not good enough,” without offering tips on how the writer can change that. This is the reason why the second phase is in forms of suggestions.

Making suggestions instead of telling the writer what he or she has done wrong ensures that you don’t discourage the writer by negative comments and offer tips for improvement at the same time. Meanwhile, always remember to propose these suggestions in the form of a question, like:

• Do you think you could explain this part a bit more?
• Do you think you could use a stronger word here?
• Using the word superb here might be a little strong. Do you think you could use another word instead?
• Do you think that you can make this sentence shorter?

In this manner, you are prompting the writer to take a second look at the essay and see for themselves that the sentence is long, or that the word superb might be pretty strong in that part of the essay. You can do this for every area of improvement that you see in the essay.

Best of all is that you will not discourage the writer and make him or her feel bad. Instead, you are offering the type of constructive feedback that every writer needs, without crippling them in the process. Moreover, by phrasing suggestions as questions, you are putting a stronger emphasis on the fact that you and the writer are peers: that means equal in ability (or age) – instead of making the writer feel inferior to you.

Step three: Correcting grammar and spelling errors

This step isn’t the most important when it comes to the whole process, but you still should point out the spelling errors , wrong words, homonyms, and grammar errors that have slipped into the essay. This step is important to make the essay correct, but it will not have an impact on the essay or on the writer.

Most writers are fine with making spelling and grammar errors in the first draft and editing them out later, unless they are perfectionists who want to get everything right on the first try. Regardless, just because you offered constructive feedback in the first two steps, it doesn’t mean that you are entitled to skipping this step.

Moreover, two pairs of eyes going over the same essay will catch most, if not all, grammar and spelling errors, and make sure that the essay is the best version of itself it can be. This is important because it’s very easy for homonyms, for example, to go unnoticed (which is the reason why a lot of people today can barely tell the difference between you’re, your, they’re, their, were, we’re, and so on – they all sound the same). However, these types of spelling errors need to be eradicated from the essay.

Tips and tricks for peer editing

Peer editing needs, ultimately, to help the writer improve upon the essay and improve his or her writing in the future. However, you can also make peer editing more fun, interesting, and productive as well, by using some of the following tips:

• Create a grading system, where you award one or two, or more stars, for sections like: writing, word choice, sentence structure, use of adverbs, etc.
• Explain why you’re giving each compliment – not just saying that you liked something, but that you liked it because it brought a good image, or explained the point really well, etc.
• Talk to the writer as if you’re best friends, even if you’re strangers;
• Always try to be compassionate and empathetic – especially if you’re going to peer editing the writer’s essay tomorrow;
• Always be positive and use complimentary words;
• Treat improvements as things that the writer has not yet done (instead of presenting them as things the writer would have never done);
• Being friendly and positive will make the whole process easier and more interesting, instead of acting cold and professional all the time.

Image credit: Pixabay

Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As an art student, she’s moonlighting as a writer and is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her laptop, trying to create her own.

5 Ways to Foster Effective Peer Editing: How to teach peer editing in the ELA classroom

When I teach writing in my classroom, I teach it as a process. Every part of the writing process, from the initial brainstorming to peer editing, is equally important and integrally essential to the final draft. It is also important to know how to teach peer editing in an effective way.

All too often, students flounder when it comes to peer editing essays. Not only is it confusing for students, but they often lack the direction and skills that they need to successfully peer edit a paper. Simply designating a day for either peer editing and giving each student a red pen and free range to check his or her best friend’s paper is not enough.

When it comes to peer editing, students need direction and focus. Here are FIVE ways to make peer editing successful in your class.

How to Teach Peer Editing: 5 Effective Strategies

1. peer edit with mentor sentences.

Peer editing with mentor sentences is a great way to not only teach students how to write correct and effective thesis statements and topic sentences, but it also guides students because they are looking for and correcting or complementing specific aspects of the essay. I like to do this peer editing activity when my students are still outlining their papers. This activity takes about 15 minutes to complete from start to finish, can easily be completed at the end of the class period, and provides students with critical feedback early in the writing process.

To peer edit with mentor sentences, simply write or project a sample thesis statement and topic sentence (one, or one for each body paragraph) on the board. Then have students trade papers and instruct them to peer edit only the thesis statement and topic sentences. Students should use the mentor sentences as a guide to making sure that the thesis statement and topic sentences are accurate and complete. The thesis statement should include information about the topic of the essay, a strong verb, and supporting reasons. Similarly, the topic sentences should include a topic, strong verb, and a clause.

When using this method of peer editing, it helps to color code the mentor sentences. Doing this provides extra support for struggling writers, and it especially helps them understand and identify each part of the thesis or topic sentence.

2. Peer Edit in Different Colors

Students are never too old to work with crayons. I love using crayons in my classroom or essay writing and peer editing. If you are wondering how to teach peer editing, using color-coding strategies is especially helpful.

When peer editing with colors, I like to designate colors for certain parts of the essay. Then, I have my peer editors underline each part of the essay with a certain color. For example, as I get my students to edit, they will underline the thesis statement in red, topic sentence in orange, examples in blue, and commentary in green. From there, they will then look specifically at each part of the essay as designated by its color.

3. Peer Edit with Stations and Rotations

Once I explain the process, we begin the rotation. As students work their way through each rotation, I keep a to-do checklist on the board for my students to follow. Each rotation asks students to peer edit something different in the essay. By doing this, students are very focused and they are editing with a purpose.

The last rotation is a suggesting and complimenting rotation where students must provide thoughtful and helpful suggestions and compliments for the paper. This is especially helpful because it forces the peer reviewer to read with a critical eye, which then strengthens their own writing capabilities. You can purchase this resource HERE .

4. Peer Edit Electronically

If you are fortunate enough to have access to technology or be in a 1:1 digital classroom, you can take peer editing to a whole new level in Google Docs. When I use Google with my students for peer review, I instruct each student to change the editing setting from “editing” to “suggesting.” That way the peer reviewer can type directly in the document without changing the original content.

One of the benefits of peer editing digitally is that students can plug the essay into grammar checking websites like grammarly.com or polishmywriting.com to help them provide meaningful suggestions when it comes to grammar, spelling, and style.

5. Peer Edit with Forms and Rubrics

One of the best and most tried and true ways to help students complete peer editing is by providing them with some sort of checklist, form, or even a rubric. I use my Peer Editing Made Easy forms in my classroom when we don’t have time to run through the rotations. These forms are detailed and provide students with specific information to look for. Plus, there is a peer editing form for all of your writing needs.

When peer editing this way, it is also helpful to provide the peer editors with a copy of the rubric you will use to grade the essays. By doing so, the reviewer is looking specifically at different elements within an essay with a critical eye.

As with any portion of the writing process, I always assign points and a grade for peer editing. Usually, these points are merely participation points, but by doing so, I show the students that I value peer editing as part of the writing process.

This comment has been removed by the author.

It's as if you read my mind and posted this just for me! Today was the typical peer evaluation nightmare. Your post came just when I needed it. Thank you!

Oh no! I'm sorry your peer editing was a nightmare. I've been there before, and it is ROUGH. I hope some of these ideas can help you out next time.

We have gone to Chromebooks and are 1-1, I have been trying peer editing stations and prefer it to just the swapping papers with one student however I have been trying to figure out how to use the stations and not have them print their papers out. I love the idea of using the suggesting but do your students share their paper with certain students at the stations or do they pass their Chromebooks? What have you done and what works best? Thank you.

If you are doing peer editing stations electronically, I would suggest instructing the students to first make a copy of their file and peer edit that one. That way they still have the original if something happens. Then keep all of the Chromebooks stationary, and have the students rotate around. I'm thinking instead of musical chairs, you could do musical Chromebooks…but every students would get one!

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Academic Programs

• Tuition & Financial Aid

Student Experience

The power of peer editing: five questions to ask in the review.

You’ve put in the work of researching, reading, writing and revising your paper. You’ve read it out loud and followed the assignment requirements.

You’re going strong, but there’s still another step you need to perfect your paper.

The peer edit.

Utilizing peer review in your writing process may not always be easy. You’re offering the paper that you’ve spent hours on up for critique.

But the peer edit can be so beneficial in enhancing your writing.

We may often think of “peer review” in terms of journal articles that have been analyzed and approved for accuracy. While your paper won’t require that same heightened, professional level of critique, bringing it to one of your peers—whether a classmate, a friend, a mentor—can enhance your research paper greatly.

Here, we share about the importance of incorporating a peer review process for both the author and the reviewer.

What is Peer Review?

A peer review of your research paper is different than the editing process that you go through. Rather than you going through each section, citation, argument in your paper, someone else does. A peer review involves handing it to someone you trust to allow them to read it and provide feedback to help make your paper the best it can be.

This is no small feat. It requires you to be vulnerable about what you’ve written. You need to be willing to accept mistakes you may make and be committed to accepting their suggestions as a way to grow in your writing and academic work.

Why is Peer Review Important?

This stage of the editing process is unique in that pulls in another perspective. Unlike you, your peer editor hasn’t been immersed in reading and research on your paper’s topic. They don’t know for certain what direction your paper will go or what your arguments are.

This new, objective perspective brings great value in revision.

A fresh set of eyes sees issues, gaps, mistakes and clouded arguments that you may have missed or had not thought of.

When your peer editor sits down and sifts through your paper, they provide both positive comments of what’s going well in the paper, as well as opportunities for improvement in areas that may be unclear. Their input helps make your paper better, if you choose to follow their recommendations.

If you’re working with a classmate, trade papers and review each other’s paper. This not only allows you to receive feedback on your paper, but it also develops your skills in providing feedback and looking for specific elements in a paper. You become a better editor. Whether you’re passing your paper off or reviewing a paper, your skills in writing can be greatly enhanced.

Questions to Ask in the Peer Review

In the peer review process, it’s helpful to have a plan of action in addressing the paper. Below are five questions that can help guide the process. Whether you’re the author or the reviewer (or both), these five questions can help focus your attention on key components of the assignment and enhance your skills.

Question 1: Is the Audience and Purpose of the Paper Clearly Established?

As a reviewer, one of the first things you want to be sure to notice in the paper is if you can figure out who the paper is addressing. The audience of the paper should be evident in reference to the topic, the tone of the paper and the type of language used.

For example, if the paper contains a lot of jargon and industry-specific language, you could infer that the audience would be familiar with those terms. If not, you may want to suggest using less jargon or explaining the terms used.

The purpose of the paper should also be very clear and straightforward to you as the new reader. The thesis statement, most often in the introduction, should clearly convey the purpose. But from the opening to the main arguments to the concluding statement, the purpose of the paper should be obvious.

As a peer reviewer, you can help the author determine if both the audience and purpose of the paper are clearly established early on in the paper.

Question 2: Does the Main Point Match the Thesis Statement?

One of the most important sentences in the paper is the author’s thesis statement. The location and type of thesis statement depends on the kind of essay or paper. However, as a general rule, thesis statements should be concise, straightforward and clear in addressing the main argument.

As a new reader, you as the reviewer can provide great insight into the clarity of the thesis.

The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina has a helpful article on crafting the perfect thesis. In this article, they suggest you ask the following questions of the thesis statement:

• Can I find the thesis statement?
• Is the thesis specific enough?
• Does the thesis answer the “so what” question of the paper?
• Does the rest of the paper support the thesis statement?

Peer review can help enhance a thesis statement by noticing gaps or questions in the argument.

Question 3: Does the Paper Flow Well?

When you’re the writer of a paper, you may work in sections. First, you tackle main point A, then move onto B, add in C and finish up with a conclusion.

When you’re a peer reviewer, you’re reading it for the first time all in one glance. With this new perspective, you can more easily identify gaps, questions and concerns in the structure of the paper.

Does point A leap to point B leaving little to hold on to? Note that the author should include a better transition. Are you left wondering what point C has to do with point A? Highlight the need for a better connection between main points.

With an objective, outside perspective, you can help the author improve the flow and clarity of their paper to communicate most effectively.

Question 4: What Areas Need Additional Description?

As a reviewer of a paper, you want to fully understand the content you’re reading. And when you come across a section that you’re left wondering what’s going on, it can be frustrating.

An important question to ask as you review a paper is if each section contains sufficient description and detail to add value to the paper. Notice those areas that come across as too vague and uninteresting. Highlighting the desire for more information encourages the author to add clarity and enhance their ability to communicate effectively.

Question 5: Do you notice any grammar or word choice mistakes?

While this final question may be the most obvious, you want to help your author out by pointing out those grammar and word choice errors that she may have missed.

• Is there an extra comma?
• Does she have subject-verb agreement in all sentences?
• Are most of the sentences in active voice?
• Did they incorrectly cite their source?
• Is there an extra tab in their reference page?

Being on the lookout for these types of errors can also help you as the reviewer to refresh your skills in grammar, punctuation, paragraphs and APA Style.

Incorporating a peer review process in finalizing a paper is immensely beneficial for both the author and the reviewer. Each elevates their writing skills. The author is more confident in the paper she submits and the reviewer grows in her editing ability.

Be Supported as You Pursue Your Goals

PGS offers numerous academic support resources to equip you to succeed in your degree program, whether that’s in writing a paper or other assignments. Visit our academic support web page to discover more essential tools.

Discover academic support

Ellie Walburg

Ellie Walburg (B.S.’17, M.B.A.’20) serves as the admissions communications coordinator for Cornerstone University’s Professional & Graduate Studies division.

Related Posts

Six Steps to Really Edit Your Paper

Let’s Chat! Best Strategies to Weave Personal Interviews Into Your Paper

Must Know Strategies for Achieving Work-Life Balance

6 Simple Ways to Conquer Your Fears of Returning to School

12 Methods to Significantly Improve Your Studying

Want to learn more about cu, connect with cu.

• Student Life
• About Cornerstone
• University Offices
• Faculty & Staff Directory

Recent News

• Cornerstone Continues to Advance Growth Plans
• Enrollment Deadline Extended for Fall 2024 at Cornerstone University
• Free Tuition Expands Through the Cornerstone Commitment Grant for 2024/25

• Features for Creative Writers
• Features for Work
• Features for Higher Education
• Features for Teachers
• Features for Non-Native Speakers
• Learn Blog Grammar Guide Community Events FAQ
• Grammar Guide

Simple Ways for Effective Peer Editing

Helly Douglas

Does your class groan when you mention editing their work? Students can find it difficult to change their writing. Once their first draft is complete, they are desperate to move on to something new. As teachers, it’s hard to make them value and enjoy the process of proof-reading and editing.

Peer editing is an important part of formative assessment that allows students to support each other. It can reduce your workload and encourage learners to take responsibility for their work.

What Is Peer Editing?

Why use peer editing, how to include peer editing in your classroom, building peer relationships, final thoughts.

Good peer editing goes much further than a simple spell check at the end of a piece of writing. It's a process. Students work with a partner to read and refine their work.

Learners find it hard to hear that their writing needs improving. Making it a collaborative process allows them to hear an honest opinion from a friend. They can then help their partner with the same process.

If students find peer editing difficult, why do we bother teaching it? Well, editing is an important shift towards understanding that writing doesn’t end with a first draft.

Peer editing helps learners take ownership of their work. They improve it independently, without relying on you to tell them what to do. This is a big reduction in teacher workload and removes the bottleneck feeling where every student waits to receive individual feedback from you.

When writing, two heads are better than one. A collaborative practice helps children see their work from a different perspective. They can make changes to improve clarity and meaning.

Embed peer editing within the writing process, don’t treat it as an add-on. Make it an integral part of writing by building in enough time. Don’t expect your students to know automatically what you expect. Dedicate time for the direct teaching and modeling of peer editing skills.

Use high-quality examples, called ‘What a Good One Looks Like’ (known as WAGOLLs ) to let your learners see what you are expecting. Annotate and unpick the successful features of a WAGOLL as a class and discuss how they could apply this to their own writing.

Most professional writers finish a first draft then leave it for as long as possible. When they edit their work, they are looking at it with fresh eyes. Try this technique with your learners by separating out the writing and editing sections, interleaving it with a different project.

Peer Editing Techniques

Often students find editing a boring process, but it really doesn’t have to be. Simple changes can make it feel fun.

Why not try:

• Letting students use colored sticky notes to write their edits
• Displaying work on a visualizer or photocopying for the class to see
• Using colored highlighters and pens to show the changes
• Editing via email
• Using an online editor such as ProWritingAid

Successful peer editing needs a clear purpose, or it can feel overwhelming. Don’t change too much at once. Ask yourself, what is the most important thing I want my students to develop? Decide as a class your criteria for success.

Editing is a difficult process, so value the changes and make use of them. Display pre- and post-edited work on a wall display or in a class book or blog. This shows that time spent editing has a purpose.

Start with Proofreading

Often students are distracted by simple grammatical and spelling mistakes. This stops them seeing wider changes they could make.

Try using these simple tips with your class for effective proofreading:

• Read work aloud to their partner
• Use a dictionary to self-correct spellings
• Provide a word mat of technical vocabulary needed
• Ask partners to read their work
• Check the tense of the piece remains consistent

Give them a set amount of time to correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar before moving on to developmental changes.

Developmental Editing

After proofreading, your students will be less distracted by obvious errors. Use questions to help your learners find positives and developmental areas to work on.

Key questions to ask:

• Does each paragraph make sense?
• Are my paragraphs in the right order?
• Which points are unclear or not detailed enough?
• Have I achieved the success criteria?

Give your students a template or guide to help them with editing. Sentence starters can help students who struggle to know what to say to their partner.

Peer editing can often fill students with dread. Showing your work to someone else is an intensely personal experience and needs treating with sensitivity.

To find the best partnerships:

• Put struggling learners with middle-ability students
• Partner your highest achieving students with secure middle-ability students
• Avoid placing best friends together unless you know they will work well
• Allow time to build a relationship
• Set clear expectations and rules to make sure peers are supportive of each other

Choose your peer editing partners wisely. Each partnership needs to be supportive but also effective.

Mark Gardner, writing in Edutopia , uses the acronym SPARK to help students understand what quality feedback looks like:

• Specific : Link comments to a discrete word, phrase, or sentence
• Prescriptive : They offer a solution or strategy
• Actionable : Students know what steps to take to improve
• Referenced : The feedback directly links to the task criteria
• Kind : Frame comments in a supportive way

You can’t achieve successful peer editing overnight. Learners need to be taught how to give and receive feedback in a supportive way. Using WAGOLLs, writing frames and sentences starters will help them know what to say to their partner.

Peer editing can be an enjoyable experience by building positive relationships and valuing the time spent making changes. For teachers, peer editing offers huge potential for workload reduction and encourages students to become independent.

It must be more than a bolt-on and requires time to embed, but the results in your classroom will be well worth your efforts.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Helly Douglas is a UK writer and teacher, specialising in education, children, and parenting. She loves making the complex seem simple through blogs, articles, and curriculum content. You can check out her work at hellydouglas.com or connect on Twitter @hellydouglas. When she’s not writing, you will find her in a classroom, being a mum or battling against the wilderness of her garden—the garden is winning!

Get started with ProWritingAid

Drop us a line or let's stay in touch via :

Essay Editing Services

Essay editing services provide you with the competitive edge needed to succeed. GradeSaver helps to relieve the stress of the writing process with essay writing help. Our Harvard-educated highly professional staff makes any necessary improvements in your writing to ensure that it expresses your message, illuminates your strengths and captivates your reader. Use GradeSaver to create a well-written, polished essay. GradeSaver edits your essay to excellence. If you need help getting started, use our Writing Help.

School Paper and Essay Editing

Skilled Harvard-educated editors guarantee your essay will be vastly improved after revision.

Beginning at $9.99

College Application Essay Editing

Standing out among thousands of applications is difficult and requires meticulous work and time.

Beginning at $34.99

Thesis Editing

Editing your own thesis is difficult and time-consuming. Proper editing cannot be done unless the editor has some distance from the work.

Cover Letter Editing

Enhance your cover letter to give your potential employer the best first impression.

Scholarship Essay Editing

Winning a scholarship can be harder than getting into an exclusive college. You need an especially great scholarship essay to win money.

Please keep up the excellent work. I'm amazed at the high quality and the speedy turnaround and will definitely be telling my friends about how the editors here are truly vested in student success. Kay

Our Essay Editors

GradeSaver is staffed entirely by Harvard-educated essay editors who will help you reach your academic and professional goals. Our editing service provides a complete grammatical, technical, and stylistic revision of your essay or document with a focus on academic writing. Our essay editors specialize in college application essay editing, academic essay editing, editing, cover letter editing and scholarship essay editing. GradeSaver subjects your work to the highest standards and is committed to helping your writing achieve perfection.

English Current

ESL Lesson Plans, Tests, & Ideas

• North American Idioms
• Business Idioms
• Idioms Quiz
• Idiom Requests
• Proverbs Quiz & List
• Phrasal Verbs Quiz
• Basic Phrasal Verbs
• North American Idioms App
• A(n)/The: Help Understanding Articles
• The First & Second Conditional
• The Difference between 'So' & 'Too'
• The Difference between 'a few/few/a little/little'
• The Difference between "Other" & "Another"
• Check Your Level
• English Vocabulary
• Verb Tenses (Intermediate)
• Articles (A, An, The) Exercises
• Prepositions Exercises
• Irregular Verb Exercises
• Gerunds & Infinitives Exercises
• Discussion Questions
• Speech Topics
• Argumentative Essay Topics
• Top-rated Lessons
• Intermediate
• Upper-Intermediate
• Reading Lessons
• View Topic List
• Expressions for Everyday Situations
• Travel Agency Activity
• Present Progressive with Mr. Bean
• Work-related Idioms
• Adjectives to Describe Employees
• Writing for Tone, Tact, and Diplomacy
• Speaking Tactfully
• Advice on Monetizing an ESL Website
• Teaching your First Conversation Class
• How to Teach English Conversation
• Teaching Different Levels
• Teaching Grammar in Conversation Class
• Members' Home
• Update Billing Info.
• Cancel Subscription
• North American Proverbs Quiz & List
• North American Idioms Quiz
• Idioms App (Android)
• 'Be used to'" / 'Use to' / 'Get used to'
• Ergative Verbs and the Passive Voice
• Keywords & Verb Tense Exercises
• Irregular Verb List & Exercises
• Non-Progressive (State) Verbs
• Present Perfect vs. Past Simple
• Present Simple vs. Present Progressive
• Past Perfect vs. Past Simple
• Subject Verb Agreement
• The Passive Voice
• Subject & Object Relative Pronouns
• Relative Pronouns Where/When/Whose
• Commas in Adjective Clauses
• A/An and Word Sounds
• 'The' with Names of Places
• Understanding English Articles
• Article Exercises (All Levels)
• Yes/No Questions
• Wh-Questions
• How far vs. How long
• Affect vs. Effect
• A few vs. few / a little vs. little
• Boring vs. Bored
• Compliment vs. Complement
• Die vs. Dead vs. Death
• Expect vs. Suspect
• Experiences vs. Experience
• Go home vs. Go to home
• Had better vs. have to/must
• Have to vs. Have got to
• I.e. vs. E.g.
• In accordance with vs. According to
• Lay vs. Lie
• Make vs. Do
• In the meantime vs. Meanwhile
• Need vs. Require
• Notice vs. Note
• 'Other' vs 'Another'
• Pain vs. Painful vs. In Pain
• Raise vs. Rise
• So vs. Such
• So vs. So that
• Some vs. Some of / Most vs. Most of
• Sometimes vs. Sometime
• Too vs. Either vs. Neither
• Weary vs. Wary
• Who vs. Whom
• While vs. During
• While vs. When
• Wish vs. Hope
• 10 Common Writing Mistakes
• 34 Common English Mistakes
• First & Second Conditionals
• Comparative & Superlative Adjectives
• Determiners: This/That/These/Those
• Check Your English Level
• Grammar Quiz (Advanced)
• Vocabulary Test - Multiple Questions
• Vocabulary Quiz - Choose the Word
• Verb Tense Review (Intermediate)
• Verb Tense Exercises (All Levels)
• Conjunction Exercises
• List of Topics
• Business English
• Games for the ESL Classroom
• Pronunciation
• Teaching Your First Conversation Class
• How to Teach English Conversation Class

Argumentative Essay Peer-Editing Checklist

I use the below checklist with my students so they can improve the drafts of their argumentative essays . Feel free to use it (or edit it as long as you don't redistribute it) if you find it useful for your class.  Note that there are APA-related questions.

There are two pages. The first page is for the prepared students who brought an essay draft to class to show their partners. The second page is for unprepared students who only have their essay in their heads (it's a verbal exercise). If your students are all prepared, then you can disregard the second page.

Peer-review Checklist Preview

Argumentative Essay Draft Peer-Editing Checklist

Pair-work : Answer the below questions based on your partner’s essay.

• The essay has a clear thesis statement presenting its stance at the end of the introduction paragraph. (YES/NO) If YES, write the essay’s thesis statement below:
• The essay presents a counter-argument to the author’s stance. (YES/NO) If YES, write the counter-argument points below:
• Can you easily find a refutation or response to each of the above points?

Point A: (YES/NO)

Point B: (YES/NO)

(Point C: (YES/NO))

• If YES, is the refutation persuasive? (YES/Somewhat/No)
• Does the essay ignore any obvious counter-arguments? (YES/NO) (Answer should be NO)
• Do the regular body paragraphs begin with a clear topic sentence that states the overall topic of the paragraph? (Example topic sentence: “ Furthermore, outsourcing can reduce company costs .” < If this were the topic sentence, then the whole paragraph would be about reducing costs.) (YES/NO)
• Does each paragraph have at least three sentences? (YES/NO)

If time allows…

• Does each in-text citation contain the author’s last name and the year of publication? (YES/NO)
• Count the number of authors cited. Do all of these authors appear in the References? (YES/NO)
• Are there any non-cited authors in the References? (YES/NO) (Answer should be NO)
• Are the References entries listed in alphabetical order?
• Do all sources accessed online have a DOI or URL?
• Are the sentences clear? Highlight the sentences you don’t understand.

Research Essay Worksheet – Verbal Explanation (Essay draft not Ready)

Part 1 (Pair Work) : Stance, Counter-argument, and Refutation

Present the below points to your partner about your essay. You do not need to write anything–explain it as clearly as possible verbally.

Stance/Thesis

• My essay argues that ….

Counter-argument

• Critics of this view argue that (1) ….
• Some people also might argue that (2) ….

Refutation/Response

• Point #1 is not (completely) true because ….
• Point #2 is not (completely) true because ….

Part 2 : Once finished, give feedback to each other. Consider the following points:

• Are the most obvious counter-arguments mentioned?
• Does the refutation address the specific points of the counter-argument?
• Is the refutation convincing

Part 3 : (Time Permitting) Verification of peer-reviewed sources

Paste a minimum of three peer-reviewed sources that you plan to use below.

Confirm with your partner that these sources are peer-reviewed, i.e. journal articles or published books.

Best of luck with your classes.

-- Peer-editing worksheet created by Matthew Barton (copyright) for Englishcurrent.com

EnglishCurrent is happily hosted on Dreamhost . If you found this page helpful, consider a donation to our hosting bill to show your support!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

FREE 2024-25 Printable Teacher Calendar! 🗓️

5 Peer Editing Strategies That Actually Work For Student Writers

When you ask your students to do peer review of their writing, do they stare at you with puzzled expressions?[…] Continue Reading

When you ask your students to do peer review of their writing, do they stare at you with puzzled expressions? Here are five specific, hands-on approaches to peer conferencing that your students can really sink their teeth into.

Revising and editing a peer’s writing helps students learn to work as a team. It also gives them a fresh perspective on the proofreading process that will help them become more aware as they write and edit their own work. So, how can you make the peer review and editing process engaging, meaningful and fun for students? Here are five ways to get your students excited about peer review that actually work!

Highlighter Markers: 3 Colors Yellow – Mark the first word of each sentence. Questions to think about: Is there variety? Does the writer use transitional words? Are there any sentence fragments or run-ons? Pink – Highlight each adjective. Think about: Is the writing descriptive? Are the adjectives strong and specific? Blue – Highlight each verb. Think about: Are there too many “to be” verbs? Are the verb choices strong?

Students begin by highlighting specifics. Then, remind them to look at the big picture. After highlighting, they can make comparisons and add suggestions about what the student needs to add, adjust or remove. Proofreading will come later. First, they are helping a peer with sentence fluency and word choice—both descriptive language and “showing without telling.”

Teach students about the revision sandwich: compliment, suggest, correct. Remind students that when reviewing someone’s work, always start out by saying what they like about their work. Next, they make a suggestion and converse with their partner. Students ask questions. Then, they make corrections. By working together, they both learn from each other.

Click here for a PDF of the Writing Wheel Checklist.

Revising (The big picture) A dd words and sentences (be descriptive, capture all ideas). R emove words and sentences (be concise). M ove words and sentences (sentence fluency, organization). S ubstitute words and sentences (word choice, voice).

Editing (Conventions) C apitalization U sage (Verbs and nouns—does it make sense?) P unctuation S pelling

To help students with their understanding, say you use your arms and hand to hold your ear to help them remember that when you revise, you want the writing to sound better. If you punch a hole in a cup and look through it, you are using your eyes. This will help them remember that when you edit, you want your writing to look better. Students could even create a telescope made out of a paper cup and call it their Revisoscope! Check out Busy Bee Kids Crafts to see how to construct one. Once students know the difference between revising and editing and have the acronyms memorized, they can jot them down on a Post-it note when checking a peer’s writing. The acronyms will remind students of what to look for and how writing can be improved to make it look and sound better!

Print out Be the Editor task cards for students to use when revising and editing at each station. Students use Zaner-Bloser’s task cards to help them discuss and check one another’s writing! The task cards provide the children with prompts, making editing/revising easier. By concentrating on one writing trait at a time at each station, students will not feel overwhelmed. Along with the task cards, put out highlighters, sticky notes, colored pencils and other writing utensils to keep students interested.

You Might Also Like

Questions That Set a Purpose for Reading

The last time you read, you had a purpose, even if you didn’t realize it. Maybe you were reading to Continue Reading

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. 5335 Gate Parkway, Jacksonville, FL 32256

In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

• About NuWrite
• Writing Advice
• Engineering & Design
• General writing advice
• Academic integrity and avoiding plagiarism (Northwestern WCAS)
• Grammar and punctuation
• Analytical writing
• Research papers
• Graphics and visuals
• Conferences
• Peer editing sheets for drafts
• Peer feedback form literature seminar
• Peer review Asian diaspora freshman seminar
• Research draft peer review
• Research paper introduction peer response
• Research paper peer evaluation of claims
• Peer editing science papers
• Getting the most out of peer reviews
• Peer review guidelines for a personal essay
• Writing assignments
• Freshman seminar award essays
• Useful links with writing advice
• Grading criteria
• Global Health
• Writing in the Humanities
• Science Writing
• Social Science Writing
• Writing for Graduate or Professional School
• Writing Advice for International Students
• Faculty-Only Resources

Peer editing

Peer editing can be done during class time or electronically outside of class, as the documents below--from Northwestern instructors--illustrate.  The questions that students respond to can vary according to the nature of the assignment and the purpose of the peer review.

peer editing sheets for drafts Peer editing sheets for two essay assignments in a freshman seminar.  Providing very specific questions helps the editors give useful feedback and suggestions. 

peer feedback form literature seminar Students exchange drafts in class, complete the peer feedback form, and then discuss their written comments with one another.  Students submit the forms with their drafts so that I can read them.  I frequently refer to their peers' comments when I am writing my own comments on their drafts.   

peer review Asian diaspora freshman seminar Students do a close reading of one another's drafts to provide insight into what has and has not been conveyed by the draft.

research draft peer review Prompts peer reviewers to comment on key pieces of information, logical organization, and conclusion

research paper introduction peer response Prompts peer editor to comment on introduction, and prompts author to respond to those comments

research paper peer evaluation of claims Prompts peer editor to evaluate the paper's effectiveness in supporting claims and addressing counter-arguments

peer editing science papers Prompts peer editor to complete a checklist on the paper's content, structure, and grammar

getting the most out of peer reviews A link to NU's Writing Place that explains how to make sure you benefit from sharing your writing with peers

peer review guidelines for a personal essay These guidelines from a freshman seminar are aimed at pairs of students who are exchanging drafts before meeting individually with the instructor. 

• Contact Northwestern University
• Campus Emergency Information
• University Policies

Northwestern University Library | 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208-2300 |  Phone: 847.491.7658  |  Fax: 847.491.8306  |  Email: [email protected]

• Health Tech
• Health Insurance
• Medical Devices
• Gene Therapy
• Neuroscience
• H5N1 Bird Flu
• Health Disparities
• Infectious Disease
• Mental Health
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Chronic Disease
• Alzheimer's
• Coercive Care
• The Obesity Revolution
• The War on Recovery
• Adam Feuerstein
• Matthew Herper
• Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu
• Ed Silverman
• CRISPR Tracker
• Breakthrough Device Tracker
• Generative AI Tracker
• Obesity Drug Tracker
• 2024 STAT Summit
• Wunderkinds Nomination
• STAT Madness
• STAT Brand Studio

Don't miss out

Subscribe to STAT+ today, for the best life sciences journalism in the industry

‘Patients like mine’ technologies must rest on solid evidence

By Saurabh Gombar June 21, 2024

V endors of electronic health records and other health technology platforms have begun to publicize and demonstrate “patients like mine” capabilities, which insert analytics distilled from EHR data into the physician workflow to guide clinical decisions. While these implementations could be helpful, simple analytics must not be passed off as evidence, and care must be taken to rigorously implement and vet these tools to avoid the negative clinical and cost outcomes associated with incorrect care decisions.

At its core, the “patients like mine” concept is simple: The outcomes of similar patients for each care choice being considered are made available to a health care provider, as if she or he asked “What happened to similar patients for whom the same choice was made?”

advertisement

Vendors are exploring “patients like mine” as a way to evolve the EHR from its historically passive role in the clinical workflow toward a more active one. To date, the limited active roles for EHRs have centered mostly on alert-driven clinical decision support (CDS) that nudged or enforced providers to comply with guidelines or processes explicitly approved by the health system. This form of clinical decision support has been shown to broadly improve clinical outcomes and process quality . But when implemented incorrectly, it can also lead to disastrous consequences .

As a physician and informatics researcher, I have long believed in the tenets of evidence-based medicine established across the last half century, and have sought to build technology that integrates reliable precision evidence into the care provided for everyone. Yet with more and more of this work being driven by the tech and investment communities, I have grown increasingly concerned that the core methodological tenets the medical community relies on are being stepped over, creating risks for patients, unexpected costs to the health care system, and increasing liability risk for medical professionals.

The medical community’s process for generating and implementing evidence for care is well established and fueled by clinical trials, observational research, and meta-analyses backed by agreed-upon methodologies and peer review. Findings are summarized into guidelines, and extensive training reinforces health care professionals’ ability to identify trusted sources of evidence and use the best evidence available to them.

Despite the rigor and volume of standard clinical evidence, it alone is not enough to meet the needs that precision medicine requires. In some specialties, less than 20% of daily medical decisions are supported by quality evidence. Technology can play a critical role to rapidly create observational evidence sourced from similar patients and enable the use of that evidence at the bedside. Big tech and large EMR players have begun developing “patients like mine” technology and their PR machines are building excitement about the promising future.

Any evidence-providing technology, however, needs to ensure that the standards of transparency, data quality, and methodological rigor are being met. Regulations already hold life sciences companies, which also have large financial incentives in clinical evidence, to high standards when it comes to how they generate and communicate evidence for their products.

Automating “patients like mine” is risky and can cause harm

Let me pose a simple scenario that occurs thousands of times a day across the nation: a patient comes to their primary care physician with uncontrolled high blood pressure despite six months of attempted control on low-dose losartan, a common first-line drug in the angiotensin II receptor blocker class of blood pressure medicines. The EHR identifies 10,000 “similar” patients and displays for half a dozen possible blood pressure therapies their expected changes in blood pressure after six months along with their five-year heart attack risk. The physician sees that blood pressure appears best controlled with hydrochlorothiazide (another common blood pressure medicine in the class of thiazide diuretics), and the five-year heart attack risk is lowest by a few percentage points, and so adds it to the existing treatment regimen, and sends the patient on their way.

The addition does indeed help control the patient’s blood pressure. But 12 months later, the patient sees his doctor because of pain and swelling in his big toe. He is diagnosed with gout, a condition that thiazide diuretics increase the risk of. The patient now needs expensive chronic management for a painful and debilitating ailment that could have been avoided by taking a more evidence-based approach of either adjusting the dose of losartan or adding an alternate medication.

If recommendations like the scenario I described are built into clinical workflows, it will play out hundreds of times across the country.

What went wrong in that instance, and how can it be prevented?

First, the EHR automatically defined “similar” without the physician adding important clinical criteria for their patient. Because “similar” can be defined in any number of ways, understanding what is the physician asking is essential for correctly defining “similar.”

Second, patients can be “similar” at different points in their clinical journeys; making sure “similar” patients are at the same decision point is essential. In the hypertension scenario, a patient could have uncontrolled blood pressure any number of times over the course of their life and, if all such points are included, the most intense treatment regimen will likely show the best outcomes — but such a regimen will also likely come with the most adverse events. Using an appropriate methodology to identify the decision point, as well as to match patients on demographic and clinical characteristics related to their outcomes, is necessary to produce reliable clinical suggestions.

Third, by providing only simple analyses of the percentage of patients with controlled blood pressure or 5-year heart attack risk, and not confidence intervals around the point estimate, “patients like mine” fails to convey uncertainty in the prediction.

Fourth, these methodological issues are compounded by messy EHR data which should be cleaned prior to preforming predictive tasks.

Five steps to correctly get to evidence for “patients like mine”

To correctly generate evidence from observational data like that extracted from the EHR to guide therapy for “patients like mine,” the following criteria must be met:

Use proper statistical methodology. Appropriate statistical methodology that controls for confounders in observational data is essential to drawing conclusions from real-world data.

Standardize data quality evaluation. Datasets used for predictive purposes need to be cleaned for purpose and each time a cohort of patients is created for a “patients like mine” analysis the cohort needs to be assessed as being statistically powered to answer the clinical question being asked .

Standardize definitions of clinical concepts. A condition like diabetes can be defined in many different ways from looking at diagnostic codes, medications, lab values, and a combination of these over time. Definitions must be transparent to allow providers to know if their patient meets the criteria.

Regulatory grade transparency and auditability. Any recommendation made by a “patients like mine” system should be traceable, including source data, methods, and code used to implement the analysis. Such “patients like mine” tools are to be regulated as medical devices in guidance released by the FDA in late 2022.

Convey information and visualization to providers. Providers need to be given enough information to contextualize a recommendation and determine if their patient is appropriately represented in it.

While I remain excited and enthusiastic about the potential of bringing precision evidence to care for everyone, and believe that “patients like mine” approaches are an integral way to improve decision-making, I believe it is imperative to stick to sound methodology and transparency when generating evidence. Implementing dashboards with superficial analytics without understanding the underlying clinical scenario will lead to worse outcomes for patients and higher costs to an already overburdened health system.

Saurabh Gombar, M.D., Ph.D., is the chief medical officer of Atropos Health, which creates real-world evidence for health systems and life science companies, and an adjunct professor of medicine at Stanford School of Medicine.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Have an opinion on this essay submit a letter to the editor here ., about the author reprints, saurabh gombar.

Artificial intelligence

STAT encourages you to share your voice. We welcome your commentary, criticism, and expertise on our subscriber-only platform, STAT+ Connect

To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page .

Recommended

Recommended Stories

Medical experts must step up if health justice is to enter the courtroom

Getting ahead of a non-alcoholic beverage boom among youths

STAT Plus: Why a big California employer ditched Elevance for some of its health plans

STAT Plus: How a tweet about a gene discovered long ago led to a $190 million startup and, maybe, hope for heart disease

STAT Plus: The inside story of how Lykos’ MDMA research went awry