SQ2 Mayra Hernandez

Peer Response: Teaching Specific Revision Suggestions
Authors: Gloria A. Neubert and Sally J. Mcnelis
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 79, No. 5 (Sep. 1990) pp. 52-56

The article is about of a national research of succesfil writing teachers and students that found many teachers do not use the "Peer Revision Group" as technique because they had problems with the students to answer to classmate writing.
The students found something bad about their peers and rarely help them with their writing because when they got the result they receive general and vague suggestions. For some years High Schools and Colleges had been using the Peer Revision Groups, they called PQP (praise, question and polish) this technique helps student focus on the activity and requieres groups members that have to read others student writings and response by writing on the PQP form that the teacher provides to the students with some questions, like to put comments with possible changes and suggestions. The article statement that the PQP has already enrolled in middle shcool education, some students were in PQP session and the rest of the class were watched the activity, as a result they gather all the information and got some students response as "vague", "general but useful" and "specific" comments. The vague comments were full general and without specific direction of revision, the "general but useful" were still general but with a random direction of revision and the last one "specific" were comment with specific direction of revision.
With this information they decided to teach the students some clues and help to add specific comments. The first activity was total class activity, the students were enrolled in a peer response session were displayed on the projetor, then the students get know that the firts comment it was the last useful compared with the second comment. The other activity was "small group activity", this process enrolled students in a small group according to their personality and they had to response why their response was effective or not. And the last activity was named "individual work" each student had to select three innefective response and made a useful comment to the writer.
These PQP activities were used on the next writing and the specific comments were increase and the vague decrease.

Question:
What is the main propouse of the PQP?

The main propouse of the PQP is to improve the comments of the students when they have to comment or give some opionios about other classmate wrtiting by activities and as a result they can do a best and useful comment and this can help to the writer.


a little late :D