1. Presented at ETRC by
Eve Smith, Senior English Language Fellow
26.02.2014
ACADEMIC WRITING
AND PEER RESPONSE
ALICE S. LEE
UNIVERSITY OF MACAU
INDIANA UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

2. WHAT IS WRITING?
• Do you agree or disagree with the following?
• Writing is a cognitive act.
• Writing is an individual act.
• Writing is difficult.
• Do you agree or disagree with the following?
• Writing is about communication.
• Writing is about documentation.
• Do you agree or disagree with the following?
• I like teaching writing.
• I love teaching writing.
• I hate teaching writing.

3. WHAT IS WRITING?
• Writing is a social act.
• Writing is about the
development of at least TWO
selves:
• Writer self
• Reader self

4. DEFINING ACADEMIC WRITING
• Academic discourse community is complicated.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Basic writers
L1/L2 writers
Disciplinary writing
Genre writing
Academic publishing
???

5. FOR OUR PURPOSES…
• Our students are…
• Undergraduates
• New to the academic discourse community
• ???

6. OUR AIM…
• When teaching basic academic writing, we need
to consider…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Content development?
Text structure/organization?
Argument effectiveness?
Logic?
Purpose?
Audience?
Format?
Documentation style?
Grammatical correctness?

7. WHAT SHOULD WE PRIORITIZE?
• What are the foundations students can build upon?
• ???
• Purpose
• Every piece of writing has to have a purpose.
• Audience
• Every piece of writing has an intended audience.
• Writer identity = writing longevity
• Ownership
• Investment

8. HOW CAN PEER RESPONSE HELP?
• But first…some writing and peer response myths…
Expert writers write by themselves.
Expert writers do not give or receive feedback.
Academic writing cannot be practiced.
Novice writers do not have opinions.
Novice writers do not know enough about writing to provide
helpful advice to their peers.
• ???
•
•
•
•
•

9. EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY…
• My final product!
• Lee, A. (2007). Making ESL textbooks more relevant to EFL
students. Essential Teacher, 4(2), 33 – 35.
• What happened behind the scenes?
•
•
•
•
Draft 1
Draft 2
Draft 3
Draft 4

10. DEMYSTIFYING THE WRITING PROCESS
• Writing is a _____ act.
• Writing is about communicating ideas to other people
(audience) for a reason (purpose).
• Peer response adds the “social” to the writing
process of…
•
•
•
•
•
Brainstorming
Drafting
Revising
Editing
Proofreading

11. NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN…
• Take out a piece of paper and write on this topic
for 10 minutes:
• Advertising is now a very big business, but it is not always
ethical, often encouraging people to buy things they do
not really need. How do you view this issue?
• But Alice, you said writing is a social act…This reads
to me like a random timed essay question…
• Who do you think is the audience for this type of writing?
• What is the purpose of this type of writing?

12. L1 PEER REVIEW ≠ L2 PEER REVIEW
• Problems with following L1 peer review:
• L1 peer review makes a number of assumptions about
writers.
• Writers are familiar with the peer review process.
• Peer reviewers are comfortable giving honest feedback.
• Peer reviewers know what to look for.
• L2 peer review process needs to revisit these
assumptions.

13. WHAT DO TEACHERS NEED TO DO IF…
• Writers are NOT familiar with the peer review process.
• ???
• Teacher must model the process, not just once, but
repeatedly, in small dozes.
• Peer reviewers are NOT comfortable giving honest
feedback.
• ???
• Teacher must provide a safe environment for feedback to
happen.
• Peer reviewers DO NOT know what to look for.
• ???
• Teacher must provide specific questions that peer reviewers
can answer.

14. PEER REVIEW DO’S AND DON’TS
• Do’s
• Do’s
• Don’ts
• Don’ts
• Don’ts

15. SETTING UP PAIR PEER REVIEW
1. Teacher models “think aloud” throughout the
course, in small doses.
1. How to give feedback
2. How to annotate a text
2. Teacher reads through all students’ draft 1 and
designs peer review questions based on a general
impression of where the students’ drafts are.
3. IMPORTANT! Teacher does not mark on individual
papers.
4. Before peer review day, teacher conducts a full
demonstration of peer review with the form.

16. 5. Teacher brings sample essays for students (in pairs) to
practice using the peer review form.
6. On pair peer review day, students bring two copies of
their draft 1 for collection.
7. Teacher randomly redistributes the drafts to different
pairs.
8. Instruct student pairs that they will need to read and
respond to two essays in class.
9. Write on the board: Round 1 - X minutes to read,
discuss, and respond on the form. Y minutes to meet
with the writer for clarification. Round 2 – X minutes to
read, discuss, and respond on the form. Y minutes to
meet with the writer for clarification.

17. BENEFITS OF PAIR PEER REVIEW
• ???
• Allows writers to ask questions
• Allows discussion between partners to confirm or
reject ideas
• Models that writing is a social act
• Provides an audience of more than one for the
writer to react to
• Encourages scaffolding

18. YOUR TURN AGAIN…
• Pair up
• Look at your drafts and write down some questions
that you might ask as a reader.
• These questions can be turned into guiding peer
review questions.
• For example:
• As a writer, after I have a completed draft, I may think, “I’m
not sure how effective my thesis statement is…”
• This statement can be turned into a question…
• Is there an effective thesis statement in the introduction
paragraph?
• What do you expect to read in the rest of this essay based on
this statement? Are those expectations met?

19. STILL YOUR TURN…
• Let’s look at the questions you developed and
choose a few to work with.
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• Exchange one of your drafts with another pair.
• Apply these questions to the new draft that you
have.
• Write down your answers AFTER you have discussed
them with your partner.

20. DON’T FORGET…
• Writing is a _____ act.
• So…
• Don’t just give pair peer review answers back to the writer.
• Time must be spent in class to
• Allow the written ideas to be communicated.
• Allow questions to be asked by the writer.
• Allow clarification to happen.

21. DEVELOPING THE READER SELF
• The peer review process encourages the
development of…
• Critical thinking
• A reader self
• A writer self
• How can this be captured?
• Require that writers ask questions on their drafts on peer
review days.
• Require a Revision plan
• Assess the process work

22. SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF WORK?
• Peer review = working harder?
• Peer review = working smarter?

23. Q&A