Trained Peer Review: The Potential for Change in Academic Writing

Lilian Mina is a teacher scholar in Composition and TESOL. She was awarded an MA in TEFL from the American University in Cairo. She is now progressing towards her doctorate in Composition. Her research interests include teaching writing with computers, the use of Web 2.0 technologies in writing, business and technical writing, and L2 writing.

Are you a writing teacher at college level? Then you must have used peer review in one or more of your classes. You must also have experienced some frustration that peer review sessions were not very successful or very useful to students. You probably struggled with structuring these sessions and did not know what materials to use for better results. You also may have heard students complain about the use of these sessions or the trivial help they get from them. If this marks your experience with peer review in the college writing class, then this is the book you need to read. The book introduces a structured way of carrying out effective peer review sessions that are likely to help students progress and write better subsequent drafts. The book provides you with specially tailored materials for peer review sessions: from a review checklist to a list of helping phrases. Peer review sessions will never be a pain in the neck.