SQR 2

Aryzbeth Saldana
Eng 1320/1301.158
Trang Phan
09/07/10

Peer Response: Teaching Specific Revision Suggestions

Summary

   The article is focusing in how unskilled are middle-school students to give specific comments to their peers writings. Gloria A. Neubert and Sally J. McNelis talk about how Praise Question Polish (PQP) is a good technique to help students with their critique process.
   The PQP technique is a three step procedure. In the first step the student needs to express approval of the composition in by asking the question: what is it good? why is it good? The second step is to tell the writer what they don’t understand as a reader. And the third step is to give a suggestion for improvement to the writer.
   In the article the authors mention how once the PQP process was introduced to their middle-school students it wasn’t that successful. It required the teachers to create some activities in order to make it useful. The teachers categorized the students’ comments as “vague”, “general but useful” and “specific”. Consequently once the planned activities were applied to the students, they helped them observe and understand how the “vague” and “general but useful” comments were not effective for the writer. As the teachers repeated the activities, the percentage of specific comments from the students continuously increased.



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



Question #2

How is PQP technique described in the article? Why is it important to have Praise, Question, and Polish parts?

PQP stands for Praise, Question, and Polish. It is an organizational technique used in order to improve the students critique process. In a revision comment for writing, is very important to have each one of these parts in order to realize an effective comment. What I mean by effective is that the comment should be useful for the writer. Specific comments are very useful for writers because it shows them what is missing to their papers, or what is not necessary at all. The Praise part is very important for writers because is when you tell them what you as a reader like about their work and, why you like it? In order for the writers to see if that is really what they’re trying to say. The second part “Question” is as important as Praise because is when you tell the writers what you don’t understand of their work. And the third part “Polish” is a suggestion that you as a reader give to the writer in order to improve the writing. In sophomore year when I got to the USA, I used to get very frustrated (I still do sometimes) by that fact that I knew I was writing like an elementary student. Therefore I have always asked someone to revise my writings before I turn them in. Most of the time Diana, my friend would revise my writings, we would go through the content, she would be telling me which parts are not strong enough (no details), where I’m getting off topic or where I’m not being understandable at all, and as we go on she would be telling me which words should I look up in the dictionary, just to be sure if they’re right. As student I really like to have my writings revise before I turn them in or let anyone read them, I feel uncomfortable knowing that I may have not got my point clear.