I believe that peer review can provide many benefits to ESL writers, including helping them to engage in learning, develop audience awareness, build a sense of classroom community, improve analytical skills, and, of course, improve their writing (Liu & Hansen, 2002, p. 8). I also believe that peer review brings just as many or more benefits to the student reviewing a peer’s paper as to the student writer (Lundstrom & Baker, 2005). In my experience, when students receive peer review before revising their drafts, it can substantially increase the quality of their writing.

However, in almost 25 years of using peer review in composition classes, I have observed some pitfalls of peer review, including students getting away from their assigned task when working in small groups, not trusting each other’s feedback, and having trouble understanding each other’s spoken English. I’ve also witnessed students who are reluctant to participate, perhaps due to shyness, hesitance to critique their peers, or lack of experience in classrooms where students are expected to participate by offering comments and questions.

For about 15 years, though, I have been using some rather unusual but very effective ways of conducting peer review in ESL writing classes, and, in one case, I had the opportunity to implement these activities in an EFL writing class in Poland. These peer review activities avoid the common pitfalls for the most part and result in productive, often fun peer review sessions. Table 1 outlines some common pitfalls of using peer review and shows how the approaches outlined here help address them.

I have used the activities outlined here in courses in the United States for first year ESL undergraduates. This includes a Composition I-ESL course as well as a course immediately preceding that course, which enrolls students who are not yet ready for Composition I. Their writing assignments range from 3 to 10 pages in length. The following activities work better for papers of three to four pages (or fewer), or with two to four page excerpts of the longer papers. Instructors can use their creativity and experience in other contexts to adapt the activities for their own teaching situations.

All of these peer review activities involve conducting peer review as a full-class activity, with students sitting in one big circle. Thus, these activities may be difficult to implement in very large classes. Each of the activities involves asking in advance for two to four students per session to bring one copy of their draft for each of their classmates. Volunteers are typically not difficult to recruit, but the first time a teacher uses one of these activities with a given group of students, he or she may need to explain that the handful of volunteers will have the benefit of receiving feedback on their writing from the whole class and from the instructor. Often it’s the stronger students who volunteer, at least at first, but this doesn’t matter. This allows class members to see a well-written draft, which can motivate them to improve their own draft. Additionally, through the process of peer reviewing a strong draft, class members learn that even a strong paper can be improved, and that even weaker writers can give a strong writer constructive suggestions.

Activity 1: Note Cards With Instructions

Materials: Enough large note cards (or half-sheets of thick paper) for each student plus the instructor. Written on each note card is one of the following instructions:

• Ask a question
• Make a suggestion
• Explain what you like about the paper

These instructions should be written in large letters with colorful markers. They can also be decorated. For example, the “Ask a question” note card can have small question marks surrounding the words, written in various colors; the “Make a suggestion” card can have a lit-up, yellow light bulb drawn on it, to represent the notion of a good idea; and the “Explain what you like about the paper” can include a smiley-face.

Procedures:

• One class session in advance, the instructor recruits two or three student volunteers to bring a copy of their paper for each student and to read their paper aloud at the next class.
• On the day of peer review, the student volunteers distribute their papers to the class, and the instructor determines which volunteer will receive peer review first.
• The instructor distributes one of the note cards to each student and also takes one for him- or herself.
• Students are told that they will be listening to and reading along with their classmate’s paper, and that when the classmate is done reading, they will be required to follow the instructions on the note card. Especially if students are inexperienced with peer review, students can be reminded that this is a chance to really help their classmate improve the draft.
• The volunteer student is asked to affirm that he or she welcomes comments and suggestions.
• The volunteer student reads his or her paper aloud, with class members following along on their own copy.
• Students are then told to hold their note card up on their desk so that their peers and the instructor can see it, and not to put their card down until they have followed its instructions.
• Students are asked to either raise their hand or to simply jump in with their contributions. The student author can be encouraged to call on his or her peers if they raise their hands.
• The instructor summarizes what the class has described as the strengths of the draft as well as the suggestions the class members have provided. The instructor adds any of his or her own suggestions, as appropriate.

Notes to Instructor:

As classmates ask their questions and make their comments, the instructor can summarize students’ contributions, affirm them, ask for clarification or more information, or add caveats. The instructor can also make comments or jump in to complete the instructions on his or her own note card. In this manner, the instructor guides students in their response to their peer’s writing and models giving constructive feedback in a friendly, nonthreatening manner. I am always impressed with the quality of feedback that students receive from peers, and I am often happily surprised when a weaker writer provides insightful comments.

During this process, the instructor should be flexible. For example, it’s common for a student to say something like, “Noora just gave the suggestion I was going to give, so I’m going to ask a question instead.” Or “My note card says to ask a question, but I actually have a suggestion.” Because the idea is to get students to participate, I welcome students’ initiatives to take control of this process because I see it as evidence that they are engaged and invested.

I typically also provide all the (warranted) positive feedback I can during the session because I know that the student has taken a risk in presenting his or her draft to us. I encourage the student and iterate that I think he or she can make changes successfully and improve the draft. Typically, the students who receive feedback enthusiastically take notes on the comments they receive.

This activity, as well as Activities 2 through 4, are time consuming, and thus do not allow for everyone to receive feedback at this stage of the draft. However, students are encouraged to use what they learned in the session to revise their own papers. The peer review for each student takes about 20 minutes. At the end of the session, I ask all the students if, after discussing the volunteers’ papers, they realize that there are some revisions that they need to make to their own draft. Typically, most say yes. I ask a few of these students to briefly describe to the class what changes they plan to undertake, and then I give the class 5–10 minutes to make notes to themselves about their planned revisions. If they so desire, students can also seek help from the writing center or their instructor outside of class. Later, students typically participate in a written peer review, where everyone has a chance to get their paper reviewed. Students also receive at least one round of written feedback from their instructor before the final draft is due.

A Note on Adapting This Activity:

When I recently gave a workshop on peer review in Poland, an EFL environment, one participant indicated that she liked this approach, but that she was afraid her students would focus their comments primarily on grammar. She indicated that she would adapt the activity to her context by having some of the note cards say “Comment on the content of the paper.” She said that she might perhaps even add specific instructions, such as directing the student to focus on the paper’s thesis statement or organization. Any number of such adaptations could be successfully made to this activity.

Activity 2: Olympic-Style Rating of Papers

I typically use this activity after students have experienced Activity 1.

Materials: For each round of peer review that will happen that day, enough large blank note cards (or half-sheets of thick paper) for each student plus the instructor.

Procedures:

• The instructor recruits volunteers, as in Activity 1, and they bring and distribute their papers to the class.
• The instructor distributes one large blank note card to each student and also takes one for him- or herself.
• The volunteer student reads his or her paper aloud, with class members following along on their own copy.
• The instructor asks how many students have watched the Olympics, and asks someone to explain how Olympic judges rate the athletes. As a class member explains, students usually start to understand that they will be rating their classmate’s paper in the same way.
• The instructor tells the students that after the volunteer has read the paper, they should be ready to give it a score on a scale of 1–10, with 1 being low and 10 being high. They should be prepared to defend the score they give.
• Students are instructed to write down their score on the note card, making it large, dark, and easily readable—and to keep their score secret from their neighbor. The instructor also writes down a score.
• When everyone is ready, on the count of three, all participants reveal their scores to the class.
• The instructor then asks two or three students to explain why they gave the writer the score they did. The instructor can start by calling on the students with the highest score, the lowest score, and a middle score.
• As students justify the scores they gave, the instructor asks for more details and may add his or her own feedback, as appropriate.
• All students are then given the opportunity to jump in as they wish with an explanation of their scores; alternatively, the student author or the instructor can call on students.
• At the end, the instructor explains his or her score, sometimes changing it at that point and explaining how he or she was swayed by the arguments of one or more of the other “judges.”
• The instructor then provides the student author with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the draft, which classmates described in the discussion. The instructor offers suggestions regarding the revisions to be made.

Notes to Instructor:

This activity tends to generate a lot of student interest. When the instructor explains that the paper will be scored by everyone on a scale from one to 10, sometimes, the student volunteer exhibits mock (or not-so-mock?) nervousness. However, because we’ve done Activity 1 peer review before, the volunteer usually seem to understand that this is a constructive and very friendly experience.

When scores are revealed, students are very interested in looking around to see what scores their classmates (and their instructor) have given the draft. Often, students write humorous scores like 8.4578 or 9.999999, for example. During the activity, for fun, I sometimes play up the Olympics theme by calling on “the judge from Kuwait” or “the judge from Korea.”

Activity 3: Candy Rewards

This activity is similar in set-up to Activities 1 and 2, and I typically use it once students are experienced in peer review.

Materials: For each student volunteer, the following is needed: one large candy bar, several medium pieces of candy, and one microscopic-sized piece.

Procedures:

• The instructor presents the student volunteer with the candy, and tells the rest of the students that they will have the opportunity to earn a reward by offering helpful advice to this student author.
• The student author reads his or her paper aloud.
• The instructor tells the student author to give out the candy as he or she sees fit—either immediately after a helpful comment, or at the end—or both. The instructor explains that if the student author gives away a piece of candy and then gets a more useful suggestion, he or she can take the candy away from a peer and reward it to someone else. In order to protect their winnings, however, students are allowed to eat a piece of candy as soon as they receive it.
• The student reads the paper aloud, and then asks for comments. The student author or the instructor calls on students if needed.
• The student author distributes candy.

Notes to Instructor:

If it suits the teacher’s personality, he or she can hand the candy to the volunteer very dramatically and ostentatiously. Students who are experienced with peer review typically guess, before the instructor explains it, that they will be engaging in a friendly competition for this candy. Typically, this elicits a fun but focused attempt on students’ parts to provide very useful comments. Students don’t even bother with vague, bland comments, like “It was good.” Instead, they work at providing tactful but rather critical suggestions, and the students who provide the most focused, specific comments are typically rewarded immediately with a piece of candy. A caveat about this activity: Occasionally, I’ve had some groups of students who find this activity too silly, or who feel too inhibited to participate. This is rare, however, and sometimes students surprise me with their willingness to lose themselves in this activity. Also, of course, some instructors themselves may find this activity too silly, or may be working in environments where administrators might not approve of what could look, from the hallway, like a free-for-all. The same caveat applies to Activity 4, below.

Activity 4: Paper Ball Toss

Activity 4 is very simple, and I typically use it only with students who have experienced other forms of large-group peer review.

Materials: A piece of paper.

Procedures:

The instructor wads up a paper ball and tells the class that after the student author reads his or her draft, if the ball is thrown at them, they have to catch it and then ask the author a question, make a suggestion, or explain what they liked about the paper. They are to do it as quickly as possible and then toss the ball to a classmate.

Notes to instructors:

This activity requires all students to be ready with a contribution, and because it goes quickly, it is good to use when time is running out.

Conclusion

These activities, I find, help students get to know each other and bond into a community of mutually supportive writers. Through these large-group peer review activities, students learn how to give constructive feedback and to trust their classmates’ responses to their writing. Shy students and those who struggle with oral English are required to participate, and thus hone their skills and improve their confidence. Additionally, these activities help students in subsequent peer review activities that I conduct: This includes peer review in which students read each others’ drafts and respond in writing to a series of questions about each draft, or write letters to each other outlining a draft’s strengths and weaknesses. The activities are not only educationally useful, but they are fun. Laughter is common during the sessions, and the activities help students enjoy the class while helping me get to know my students better. During the interactions, the students reveal aspects of their personalities that their classmates and I might not otherwise see.

For instructors who are interested in trying a new approach to peer review, I suggest starting with Activity 1, and then experimenting with activities 2, 3, and 4 as time and circumstances allow.

References

Liu, J., & Hansen, J. (2002). Peer response in second language writing classrooms. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Lundstrom, K., & Baker, W. (2009). To give is better than to receive: The benefits of peer review to the reviewer’s own writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 18, 30–43.

Melinda Reichelt is professor of English at the University of Toledo, where she directs the ESL writing program and teaches courses in TESOL and linguistics. She has published multiple articles on second language writing and is coeditor, with Tony Cimasko, of Foreign Language Writing Instruction: Principles and Practices (Parlor Press, 2011).