The Composing Processes Of Twelfth Graders

As early, as the 1960’s a new way to evaluate a student’s writing began to emerge from the process theory of composition. The process theory of composition focuses on writing as a process rather than the final product. Janet Emig, in her book, The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders breaks down the writing process into three parts: prewriting, writing and revision (Emig). After her 1971 publication, the process theory gained prominence in the collegiate world and the idea of peer review emerged from the college instructor’s embracing her ideas. Many have praised the benefits of this approach to writing in the class yet many critics speak out about what the true benefits of peer review might be in a college composition course. Some researchers

The benefits and drawbacks of student peer review has to be expressed by the student to the instructor to evaluate whether it is an effective classroom method. One of the first textbooks, which advocated the use of peer review in the classroom, was the 1972 publication A Short Course in Writing by Kenneth Bruffee. Mara Holt says that “Bruffee's ideal class for the peer-critique sequence is a semester-long course” which in turn allows the students to practice the stages of a peer review. In a composition course, peer review allows the class to read each other’s’ papers in small group settings and give each other constructive criticism. The benefit of the group review is that a student will leave class with ideas on how to improve their writing, yet many instructors do not utilize this technique of learning in their classroom (Holt). There are many reasons why an instructor would negate the idea of peer review and a few reasons might be the time constraint of the course, apparent social issues between students and off topic chatter within the group. Another factor in the outcome of a successful peer review would be “factors such as a student’s personality and maturity level” (Covill 206) and how an individual student reacts to peer

Valataro states the his students complaints regarding peer review were predictable. The students had a fear of "hurting someone else's feelings with harsh criticism" (Valataro 23). Student maturation throughout the semester will be the key to cure this social constraint. There is no right or wrong in writing just better or worse. Better and worse need to be expanded on though as the word better may reflect a suggestion of a better choice of a vocabulary word. The use of worse may constitutes that the student reworded a sentence that sounded better the first time and the revision does not flow as smoothly. Thus, the reviewer of the essay may state that the paragraph sounds “worse”. A peer review allows the student to develop an ear for correct sentence structure and a successful essay formula. The greatest benefit for students during a peer review session is that the student expands on the knowledge they have of the writing process, learn from the feedback of others and learn how to weed out the good advice from the bad