Giving and receiving peer feedback in this class was a new experience for me. At the first class when Brad told us that we will be giving feedback to our peers throughout this class, I was totally overwhelmed by the idea. I did not have confidence that I would be able to give any constructive feedbacks. However, after reading the resources on the ES1102 website, I had a clearer idea of what we should be commenting about.
After all the feedback sessions that we have gone through, I have come to realize that peer and tutor feedback plays a significant role in improving our essays. It helped me to reflect on my own mistakes and learn from others at the same time. When I gave feedback on others’ post, some of the common strengths and weaknesses that we all have in writing became clear to me. This is something that I would have otherwise failed to notice, if I were asked to read through only my own posts. Sometimes I had doubts when trying to give useful feedback to my peers, which made me realize that there was still so much that I did not know or was not clear about. Some of the evident problems in others’ essays also served as a reminder for me to avoid such problems in my own essay. My peers are all skillful writers who can express their ideas fluently, beside using precise words in their essays. Their wonderful essays have motivated me to work even harder on my own writing. Thus, to me, giving feedbacks to our peers was truly a fruitful process.
On the other hand, receiving feedbacks from peers gave me a chance to look at my own essays in a different perspective. As writers, we tend to overlook the need to elaborate some of our key points, as we already have the full idea of what we are trying to get across in our post. It was only when my peers pointed out some paragraphs that they found to be unclear, that I knew that my post was still not perfect, and I had to spend more time to improve it. Brad’s feedback was often very critical as well. Be it organizational problems or grammar mistakes, he could always notice areas that you could still improve on. I think these feedbacks served as a clear guideline for me to fine-tune my essays and reader responses, which helped me a great deal while I was trying to improve my writing and presenting skills.
To conclude, peer and tutor feedback provided me with insightful suggestions on how I could improve my writing. I will remember all the feedbacks that I have received and constantly use it to improve in my further writing. I feel grateful for being in this class, where everyone was always open to feedbacks. The conducive learning environment and interesting tutor has made my ES1102 journey an enjoyable one. A heartfelt thanks to every one of you! 🙂
ES1102 
Hi Shu Ning!
It was a pleasure working with you for a few times during class! And I would like to say, please do not lose confidence in yourself, you are equally good too 🙂 (Malaysia boleh!) Since I worked with you on a few instances, I have also learnt something from you which I wasn’t aware myself either. So yup ,,, you should be more confident in voicing your opinions and ideas (or when giving feedbacks) because I believed there’s no right or wrong to it since its subjective to each individual. Do not be afraid to make mistakes or be shot down at times! Eventually we would also learn something out of it too 🙂
And I totally agree that feedbacks are useful and beneficial to help us improve on our writing! I am more motivated and encouraged to write more often in the future after learning some useful tips in ES1102 and I hope you are too! ^_^
All the best and I see you around in school!
Regards,
Angie
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Thanks very much, Shu Ning, for this well organized, fluent and insightful critical reflection. You do thorough job of reviewing the feedback component of our course and the way that both giving and receiving feedback can impact a student writer in refining a piece of writing in specific and enhancing skills in general. It’s also interesting that you note that initially you felt ‘overwhelmed’ by the prospect of giving feedback, but that after going through the course website, you felt more confident. What part of the resources was it that gave you such confidence?
Certainly, we readers can understand from this essay that you value having had the opportunity to participate in peer reviews. I’m glad you found great benefit in that. Do you think this will transfer to writing in other courses?
Whatever the case, you’ve done well with your writing throughout the term, and I can see lots of progress. Thank you for all the effort. Please enjoy the rest of your learning journey!
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