Portfolio: Final Exam Frame II

It is amazing to me how elaborate the writing process really is. Unfortunately, the bad thing about the writing process is, how you interpret it, and its unpredictability. I believe though, that there is a solution to this. The writer of “Punk Power in the First-Year Writing Classroom” brings up several good arguable points concerning how the writing process works. He believes that if you work together with at least one or more students when writing a paper, essay, or article in a newspaper that it will turn out better, since you have multiple ideas and opinions at your disposal. Optimism One himself writes, “The writing process can be greatly improved if students have a group of peers with whom they can share their writing.” I believe that this is essential to anything you ever write. Without peer support, your paper will only have one style of writing, and will only be proofread by you, which can sometimes miss errors in the paper that needs revising. Now, if you have a group to read and express their opinions, you can now incorporate several vastly different types of writing, along with multiple proofreads, to catch those grammar or spelling mistakes that are commonly missed in self proofread papers.

Indeed, this style of writing has helped me a lot during my time here at Puget Sound Early College, or PSEC. I have found myself in more than one situation when I have needed a partner to proofread my essay. Sure enough, almost every time they found something I had missed. A great example of this is when I wrote my first essay here at PSEC. I had posted it to blogger, and the teacher had had us do an in class peer review on our essays. In that time, one of my friends, Kevin, had looked at my essay and pointed out places were I had made simple mistakes in the essay. Mistakes that I had not even noticed in my essay even after I had proofread it. So for me, it’s easy to understand just how important group proofreading really is.

Just to clarify, I do not 100% support this idea either. Yes, it has been of great help to me when writing essays, but sometimes it doesn’t go the way you planned. This was apparent during my second essay. When I wrote it, I had been under a lot of stress, and probably didn’t do my best work. But I knew it was a lot better then my first essay, so I thought that I would be just fine. Just to be sure though, before I turned it in, I had two of my classmates read it, and they both said it was fine. The only changes I needed to make were to double space it, and make sure I have my sources for my quotes. I thought, “Alright, I’m doing really good, my peers say it’s great, so what do I have to lose?” This confidence unfortunately, crumbled before me in the end. When I turned it into my writing teacher, he had pointed out a few more mistakes that I had made, like putting my thesis in the wrong spot, and grammar issues like switching between past, and present tense. I referred him back to my two classmates who had said it was great, and asked, “How could this be?” He simply says, “Do you know how they did on there previous essay? Then how do you know they are going to give you a reliable critique on THIS essay?” I then understood what my teacher was saying. If you ask an alcohol addict how to stay sober, chances are their information isn’t worth the gum on my shoe. In other words, if your asking for advice, make sure where you’re getting it from is a reliable source.

All in all, I agree with Optimism One’s point, that peer review is a good solution to editing and revising papers, but I also believe that it has downfalls. Specifically if you don’t get your information from reliable source/sources. I personally believe it is all in the people you talk to; and from a personal view, I think the best advice for fixing/revising an essay, is to ask your teacher for input, not necessarily your peers. This way, you have the person who is grading your paper letting you know what his/her expectations are, and what to fix inside of the document. Your peers aren’t always going to get an accurate representation of the directions, and thus, can create problems in editing. Through all of my experience, I believe that peer review is a good idea, but asking the teacher is even better.