Critical Reflection (Peer and Tutor Feedback）

To be honest, we are unconsciously engaging in the feedback process every day in our life. Whenever we are commenting on someone's appearance or even flavors of the food, we are providing feedback. It is so natural that I never thought of the feedback process will be so critical in my English Language Journey. Besides achieving the literal motives to improve one's writing skills, peer review and tutor feedback actually manage to encourage interaction among peers and promote critical thinking skills.

During the peer review process, we are able to exchange our viewpoints on various grammar mistakes present in the essay reviewed. After in-depth discussion within the peer review team, one will actually be more concerned about the mistakes identified. As for me, I would not want to repeat the same mistake that I pointed out in others' essay. As for the tutor feedback, the comments provided are more specific and sometimes includes mistakes that the peer review team might overlooked. Thus, if the tutor feedback is done in front of the whole class, everyone can benefit through the process. Therefore, peer review and tutor feedback are both valuable to supplement each other within the essay writing process.

The peer review process serves to reverse our role as a reviewer instead of a writer, which we are unlikely to experience before this. By judging other people’s essay critically, we are actually strengthening our understanding towards the concepts mentioned in class in order to identify them. As a writer, when you received feedback from either your peers or your tutor, you can use the help from others to improve certain aspects of your essay by accepting other’s judgement willingly.

Moreover, peer review sometimes exerts peer pressure on us, whereby we will feel nervous if our friends are going to judge our essay. This actually contradicts with the traditional culture where students will only be judged by teachers. The violation of our expectation therefore results in the situation whereby we will be more focus and conscious towards the quality of our essay before sending it for peer review.   

Lastly, through interacting with the peer review team, I also learnt to listen and to take into account various kinds of opinions before making prejudgments. In short, I believe this process will be valuable not only in terms of essay writing but also in terms of communicating with people.