Giving Feedback: Student Writers
Pat Belanoff
At first, in order to make it really safe, we just read. There's no comments by the peers, they just read around and that's it.

Xavier Pino [READING]
…junkies who see no other way out of their situation other than carry a football, or shoot a basketball, usually becomes another way out. Not only is the path a lot easier but also a lot more diverse. You don't have to be able to sing or rap a single verse, you can enter into the production, promotion, or advertising aspects of the industry just as easy. And you don't have to play high school or college rap music, just one big hit and suddenly you have fame and money, without having to run a 40-yard dash in 4.0 seconds.

Belanoff
And I think that's important because, in that process your words begin to distance yourself a little bit from them. If I read something aloud to somebody else, the words begin to hang in space and I somehow or another see them better.

Thomas Fox
I think the best way actually to get good feedback on your paper, to create the trust with your classmates, and to start those relationships that will really help you in your writing is actually just to be a good reader of other people's writing. The difficult thing is you have to read really fast often times, in a classroom, you don't have time to think. But read carefully, ask the author to read carefully if you read it out loud. Make sure they don't read too fast and encourage them. Read it like it's a masterpiece.

Think about the kind of feedback you would really want. And give it to your classmate. "Um, I like it, it's good," is the worst thing you can say, "That sucks" is probably the second worst. It really helps as a writer, you'll know, that the more specific you can be, the better, the more closely tied to the text, better, the more clearly you understand what the writer's trying to do, the better. So it's a good thing to ask a lot of questions. It's good to say "What were you trying to do in this part of the paper, because this is what I got." So peer feedback is potentially a very, very, very helpful thing which is why teachers stick to it. But it's also fraught with these difficulties of, you know, you're a little afraid of your classmates, or maybe you know that their feedback doesn't matter as much as the teacher's.

Jeremy Marshall [READING]
In the future our children will be taught how to efficiently write and compose just about anything. This advancement has already started to happen in some public schools. I believe it is very important than future generations learn everything about computers, considering that they will be the key to living an efficient and prosperous life.

Marshall
For me realizing now that it's OK that you can take out a whole paragraph—if it doesn't fit, boot it. You know, I mean it's… And you're actually gonna be doing the teacher more of a service. You know, I mean, you're not necessarily gonna get a lesser grade on it because you cut something out.

Student
As soon as you started with, "I am not sure my method of composition is the same as the population." Just from right there, you're just kinda like, just explaining your own position…

Marshall
My own personal part of it. Keep in mind this is something that I wrote as a response to one of the…

Student
That's like the second sentence in the second paragraph.

Marshall
From there down, nothing else in there really needs to be there.

Student
That was an excellent first paragraph though. I like that.

Marshall
I just didn't read it before I came here, and then when I started reading it as I came here I'm looking at it and going, "Wait a minute, that doesn't really have anything to do with that, throw that away."

Fox
You can get people, your colleagues, your friends, who have slightly different opinions from you, and they can give you those opinions respectfully and that would provide the new knowledge, understanding a different position more deeply, that would in turn, provoke a revision, that's a subsequent one. That's the best use of peer feedback that I know of. But again it's also the most challenging, and the students have to believe it's worthwhile, and you have to go into that situation knowing this is really going to help you.