Learning Outcome 4: Peer Review: Be able to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process. This learning outcome is focused on the ability to critically read a peer’s project and make constructive suggestions for change, in addition to the ability to evaluate one’s own work and identify opportunities for specific improvement.
In the paragraphs that follow, I will describe my peer editing process using perspectives (ideas, claims) and the explanation of text’s relationship to them. In additional to local editing with signal phrases and in text citations, I also followed the writer’s thesis to the conclusion.
Although I have not done a lot of editing in my previous years of high school, I am glad that I got the chance to practice this incredibly important skill in my English class. In this exercise, we had to review and edit a peer’s draft of their paper, and in turn, a peer edited my own paper. In my editing, I tried to be as specific as possible, as I wanted to make clear suggestions that could be easily understood.
In reading this person’s paper, I found that they had formed a precise thesis that was easily discoverable and was supported throughout their paper. This claim was that “Though my first experience in patient care was not what I hoped it would be, it motivated me to become a dedicated and passionate medical professional in my future, which is how I believe every individual going into this field should be”. They followed this claim with a specific goal for how they thought that this could happen. In another part of the paper (#2), I explained how some of their word choice and sentence structure confused me and gave a suggestion on how it could make a little bit more sense for the reader. They had said “… change the outcome in which residents are treated”, and I suggested changing it to “change the outcome of how residents…”. Although this was a small change, I think that saying their sentence in a different way would make it much clearer for the reader to understand. Additionally, on some other pages (#3 & #4), I suggested things like changing the order of some sentences to make it flow more seamlessly, as well as a couple of transition sentences that I thought might make ideas fit better. The following images are from the paper that I edited.
#1#2#3#4
As for my paper, someone else was tasked with providing editing notes on my writing as well. Although they did not have as quite detailed as my comments were, they were still helpful in the process of editing my own paper to prepare it for the final draft. Throughout my paper, they made comments on aspects such as word choice, explanations for ideas that I presented, and transitions phrases when going from paragraph to paragraph. They suggested things that I could add, such as “add some quote analysis” on a quote that I had presented which could benefit from a more detailed explanation.
Learning Outcome Three: Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
I read an essay called “Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice” by Anthony Kwame Appiah and I had to prepare it for discussion. I went through the essay highlighting areas where I had questions, terms that needed extended definitions, and what connections I made with the article. Once I found quotes for each section, I provided an explanation on what my take was on the quote. This process helped me get use to analyzing important texts and other scientific articles. Below, the questions are in orange, the definitions are in pink, and the connections are in green. For the questions, I also placed a quote underneath each which I thought could answer the question.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice.” Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers, 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martins, 2010, pp. 66–82.
Annotation Exercise
Questions for the Text
Example: I’m not sure what Appiah means by “habits” on page 78, para 1. What does the media have to do with this? Can double up on quotes!!!!!! (questioning-orange)
Q1. Is Appiah saying that arguments change nothing, and is he saying that globalization is a good or bad thing? Or is he in the middle? Page 68, para 1 “Together, we can ruin poor farmers by dumping… Together, we can raise standards of living by adopting new policies on trade and aid… of each human life.”
“The challenge, then, is to take minds and hearts formed over the long millennia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become.”(Appiah 68).
Q2. Based on Appiah, is he saying that the media can affect people’s habits, and their new normal? On page 78, para 2, “The increasing presence of ‘openly gay’ people in social life and in the media has changed our habits.”
“I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that will bring us to agreement, but because it will help us get used to one another.”(Appiah 78).
Q3. I am not sure how conflict could arise from agreeing that the same thing is good, but that also arguments occur from wanting the same result but being conflicting about why to do it. Page 78, para 3 “live in harmony without agreeing on underlying values”. “find ourselves in conflict when we do agree on values.” How do we get anything done as a species?
“This wasn’t a conflict between values. It was a conflict of interests couched inn terms of the same values.” (Appiah 79).
Q4. So does this mean the fight for gender equality could be met with opposition because it would cause an equality of power? Or because people are forcing their ideals on others, which is the opposite of cosmopolitanism. Page 81, para 1 “Worse, they say, we are now trying to force our conception of how women and men should behave upon them.” “And then we want their governments to enforce them.”
“But I also know that the changes that these freedoms would bring will change the balance of power between men and women in everyday life.” (Appiah 81).
Class Notes- Reading Response Sources (defining-pink)
Example- To help me define cosmopolitanism, I used page 79, paragraph 3: “But this is a dispute only because each side recognizes…”
D1.To establish the varying sides of cosmopolitanism, I used page _70___: “the name not of the solution but of the challenge.” Cosmopolitanism can be seen as an ideal state, but even the author knows that this kind of peaceful existence is far from actually doable. However, that is why Appiah claims it as a challenge, because just because something is improbable doesn’t mean that individuals can choose this way of living and make the world that much more understanding.
D2.To demonstrate the contradictions that cosmopolitanism can create, I used page 77, “can’t have any respect for human diversity and expect everyone to become cosmopolitan”. This is one of the reasons that cosmopolitanism is such a challenge, because it is difficult to accept another viewpoint that is not your own.
D3. To explain that people can be very stubborn when it comes to change, but not at the point at which most people think. This quote shows how people don’t become upset merely speaking about change, but the anger comes when change is already occurring, and they want to resist that. On page 76, paragraph 1 he says “Reasoning—by which I mean the act of exchanging stated justifications—comes in not when we are going on in the usual way, but when we are thinking about change.”
Roadblocks to Change(applying-blue)
Example: People might be opposed to the change I suggested in my first essay because “we have inherited many received ideas. Above all, we have deep habits about gender” (Appiah 81).
A1. People might be opposed to helping the environment because “so long as this settled pattern is not seriously disrupted, they do not worry over-much about whether their fellow citizens agree with them or their theories about how to live.”(Appiah 74).
A2. People refuse to pick up new, strange ideas that conflict with their usual habits. Page 77, para 3 “How much of the shift away from these assumptions is the result of arguments? Isn’t a significant part of it just the consequence of our getting used to new ways of doing things?”
A3. Another blockade could be that many people believe that helping the environment is a good thing, but since many refuse to pass things that might cause jumps in prices, or even believe that information that they see is false, the problem remains unsolved. Or even because if the problem is not occurring right in front of them, they believe that it doesn’t affect them. Page 70 para 1 “A citizen of the world: How far can we take that idea? Are you really supposed to abjure all local allegiances and partialities in the name of this vast abstraction, humanity?”
