SQR 2

Eloy Gonzalez
English 1320-1301
Instructor: Trang Phan
9/7/10
Peer Response
S: Peer Response basically talks about how written suggestions made on scripts by other students to improve your writing. Many of these comments do not help the writer improve his or her skills because comments such as “that was good” or “that happened to me” don’t really give any suggestions on how to eliminate things you don’t need or help you by giving suggestions on how to improve. Gloria A. Neubert and Sally McNelis categorize these comments into three sections which are vague, general but useful, and specific. Vague is when the comments which don’t help the writer. General, but useful is a comment from which you take some advice, and specific which helps with some constructive advice. The authors suggested the idea of PQP which stands for praise, question, and polish. This technique is very effective and can help the reader make a comment that would not only help the reader but also help give a constructive suggestion. You should say what you liked about the writing. Then ask what you did not understand and finally make a suggestion to improve the writing.
Gloria A. Neubert and Sally T McNelis. “The English Journal”, Vol. 79, No. 5 (Sep., 1990), pp. 52-56

Q: How is PQP technique described in the article? Why is it important to have Praise, Question, and Polish parts?
R: The PQP technique that stands for Praise, Question, and Polish. This technique helps the reader help the writer by telling something good about his writing and this is part is the praise. Then the reader might also have a question about something they did not understand and this would be the question part of the PQP. The final part of the process after seeing the point tried to be made across the reader should try to make a reasonable suggestion taking in consideration the different factors made by the writer and this would be the polish part. This technique I would find it very useful when making comments in other writers’ papers because you are not only saying what they did wrong but you are also making the writer see their strong point and trying to help them out with a helpful suggestion. I sometimes I used more of the looking what was wrong in others papers and that would sometimes make the writers unhappy because I would never make any suggestions but only say what was wrong. I have also seen how other people just criticize my work but they would never tell me why it was wrong they just commented “First paragraph not good”. So what was I suppose to do if they don’t ask or tell me what you saw wrong in it or give me any suggestion on how to improve whatsoever. The blogger is an excellent example of why the PQP process was needed since nobody knew what to comment they just gave simple comments like “It sounded good to me” or “your article did not make sense’. These comments were really worthless since they did not use the PQP technique and most of us did not know how to improve or know if the article did show a point or not. The PQP has now given me an idea on how you are suppose to comment on others papers and how your peer response is important since you are getting help when someone revises your paper as well as giving help when you yourself revise a paper.