The Role of Peer and Tutor Feedback
In this ES1102 course, we had many writing practices. Throughout the course, we explored the different grammar rules, essay styles and presentation skills. I enjoyed these 13 weeks with Brad and my peers in class A03. Though we spent a lot of time drafting and refining our works, it was definitely well-spent and I believed this has helped me firm up my writing skills such as coherence and content organization.
We started off the semester by writing a self-reflection paper where we were required to think about our experience so far with English language. That particular reflection essay made me realize my weaknesses in the subject and why I did not like it. However, ES1102 lessons have made me realized the strengths I have and my peers have helped me further enhance my strong points. They also pointed out my mistakes in essay writing and suggested ways to improve on them.
Also, Brad made us work with different classmates almost every session. This has allowed me to adapt to different working styles as well as learn something new from each and every classmate. It helps us to view different perspectives. I find this an enriching and refreshing experience as it makes learning more dynamic and we are required to keep an open mind, embracing the different views and opinions. These pair works usually involve analyzing others' works. We were required to critically reflect on our classmates' essays, giving feedback on their APA citation, thesis statement, topic sentence, coherence and even their summary writing skills.
Our term assignment was to write a problem-solution essay. It was an open topic on social media. It was difficult to narrow down on a specific topic we want to focus on. I chose "social network addiction" eventually. We spent a few weeks writing the essay and we had one-on-one consultations with Brad to guide us along the process. Following which, we had to present our idea and the last few lessons were spent on our presentation. We learnt how to talk in front of an audience and received constructive feedback on our presentation. This exercise taught us how to clearly present our ideas with clear articulation and a loud voice. We learnt how to engage our audience by maintaining eye contact, using signal words and interactive exercises as well as having a firm, confident stance. It was nerve-wrecking even though most of us have done presentations in our school life.
After attending ES1102 classes, I will hopefully perform better for essay assignments. I will apply these skills in future academic writing. Drafting and evaluating works multiple times to check for errors such as subject-verb agreement and tenses are important. I will definitely spend more time reviewing my essays after writing them. In addition, peer reviews have tremendously helped me with my essay writing. Thus, I will ask my friends to help me read through my essays and give feedback on them before submissions. This is a really valuable experience and I am thankful to be part of this learning journey with A03.
Thank you, Aisyah, for this highly detailed, comprehensive reflection.You've surveyed the course quite completely, and of course I appreciate the positive perspective, especially on the fact that you often had to work on new teams. I just wonder if you found the peer reviews that you got on your writing truly helpful. When you suggest that you will have peers read your papers in the future, that seems like a good goal. But really will that be useful?
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I appreciate your great effort this term. All the best in your futre endeavors!