Enhancing Writing Skills: Effective Strategies for Peer Editing and Revision

“The secret to good writing is rewriting.” William Zissner, American writer

When you write something, whether it’s a story or an email, it’s unlikely that the first draft will be the best. Editing, correcting and improving are essential elements of the writing process and it’s important that students develop these skills. This is especially so when they write in English, and they're almost certain to make mistakes in spelling, grammar and the meaning they’re trying to communicate.

When students engage in thoughtful peer review, they not only improve their own writing but also develop essential skills in critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. In this post, we’ll look at a few strategies for incorporating peer editing and revision into your writing classes.

The Benefits of Peer Editing

The ultimate benefit of practising editing skills is that it produces better writing. At the very least, it’ll be more entertaining for you to read good writing when you’re marking. But there are also a few other benefits that students take out of the classroom from these activities.

Firstly, having someone else critique their work helps students understand other people’s perspectives. Just because something makes sense to one person doesn’t mean that everyone else will follow it. Highlighting that others’ way of seeing the world is just as valid as their own can be a transformative experience.

Secondly, when students review each other's work, they are active participants in the learning process. They have to engage with the ideas they’re reading and use their critical thinking skills to try and understand what they like and dislike about it.

Most curricula place great value on these skills, so by integrating them into your writing classes, you’ll be helping students develop across a range of subjects.

Strategies for Effective Peer Editing

If your students haven’t done a lot of peer editing before, they might be a little hesitant to open themselves up to criticism from their peers. That’s why it’s vital to establish clear expectations before beginning. Discuss the purpose of peer review, the specific parts of writing to focus on, such as organisation, clarity, grammar, or just enjoyment to read, and the fact that the feedback should always be constructive and helpful. There’s no point giving feedback on a piece of writing if it’s impossible to use it for improvement.

Structured Peer Review

Just because you’re putting the students in charge of their work doesn’t mean you’re giving students total control of it. Here's an example of how you might want to structure a peer review activity. Assume that students have just finished a piece of writing, but it hasn’t been checked by a teacher yet.

1.       Preparation: Start by providing students with a rubric or checklist to guide their reviews. This can help to set the expectations of what you think they should be checking for. It could be an area that you’ve just covered, such as a specific grammar point, or a list of errors that you see a lot of students making.

2.       Pairing: You can either pair students based on their writing level or interests, or do it based on contrasting personality types, if you are focusing the editing more on interpretation and meaning. The way you pair students will determine the kind of feedback they give each other, so take notes on what works and what doesn’t, and adapt your pairing over time.

3.       Review: This is the main part of the activity where students read each other’s work and offer feedback. If you’re using a rubric, ensure that they focus on it rather than giving feedback that’s too wide ranging.

4.       Discussion: Encourage discussion amongst pairs. Ask questions like, 'What works well?' and 'How can it be improved?’.

5.       Peer Reflection: After the process, ask students to reflect on what they learned from reviewing others’ writing and receiving feedback.

This is just one way of doing peer feedback, and you can always adapt it to students’ levels and interests. Whatever style of peer editing you choose, the aim is to create a positive atmosphere in the classroom where students feel safe sharing their work. David Bish has written about his experiences in changing this aspect of the classroom in this post.

Finally, technology offers plenty of possibilities for innovative peer reviews. Platforms like Google Docs allow students to work together to write and edit, and this study found that it helped Iranian students improve their academic writing.

Further reading:

·       Byrd, D., 2003. Practical Tips for Implementing Peer Editing Tasks in the Foreign Language Classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 36, pp. 434-441. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1944-9720.2003.TB02125.X.

·       Ebadi, S., & Rahimi, M., 2017. Exploring the impact of online peer-editing using Google Docs on EFL learners’ academic writing skills: a mixed methods study. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 30, pp. 787 - 815. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2017.1363056.

·       Diab, N., 2011. Assessing the relationship between different types of student feedback and the quality of revised writing. Assessing Writing, 16, pp. 274-292. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ASW.2011.08.001.

·       Insai, S. and Poonlarp, T., 2017. More Heads Are Better than One: Peer Editing in a Translation Classroom of EFL Learners. PASAA: Journal of Language Teaching and Learning in Thailand, 54, pp.82-107. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1171212.