Importance of Peer Revision Reflective Essay Example

At the end of the semester, it became vivid to be that writing is an imperative process that allows communication and preservation of ideas. As part of communication channel, writing offers a consummate platform for the author to delineate his ideas, feelings, emotions, perceptions or critics towards a topic. Sometimes the topic is engendered by the author; hence triggering myriad of reactions and responses. Consequently, an author manages to drive him notion home and share it to his or her audience. As a tool of preservation of data and information, writing constitutes the largest and widely used means of storing information for future use. The term future is relative ranging from seconds to thousands of years. This role of writing allows subsequent generations to accrue themselves with the past times, hence possibility of bringing changes and improvement. However, I have realized that these two aims cannot be achieved in a platform devoid of proper, clear, effective, and comprehensible writing. Therefore, I would like explore the importance of peer revision, reading and free writing, and referencing, which are vital factors towards skilful writing.

Importance of Peer Revision

Solomon, 2007, suggested that verification is a central part constituting the four phases of creativity cycle in writing. Verification involves reevaluating the writings after the draft has been written. Personally, I can attests that peer revision is not an option during academic writings and writing publications such as book, research reports, workbooks tools and other formal writing. The imperativeness of peer revision cannot not be overlooked since is part of producing standard writings. From what I have learned, peer revision involves reviewing a write-up severally, mostly conducted by members outside authors fraternity, with the aim of enhancing clarity, coherence, diction, flow of ideas, grammar, and comprehensibility. All these are vital aspects that I realized are imperative towards achieving the aim of writing, whether communicating or preservation of information and data.

Ideally, peer revision should be conducted severally during the process of writing. It is through peer revision that I got to know the impact of the article to the expected audience in terms of meeting the objectives of most of my writing. Understanding writer’s audiences help peer reviews to advise the writer on the appropriate changes and improvements that need to be effected on the writing. I hold that peer reviewers should be people with knowledge on the subject of the writer, which makes it possible for them to conduct an objective review.

According to Solomon, 2007, failure to take a write-up through peer review may have ample negative effects on the writing, which I personally concur.  To begin with, I realized that failure to conduct peer review ma lender a write-up to be incomprehensible due to ample grammatical error and poor sentence link, resulting poor flow of ideas in the write-up. Moreover, the vocabularies and jargons used in the write-up may be too many, inconsistent or wrongly applied, which may not be evidenced by the writer due to self-bias, but noticed by peer reviewers. In such a case, I comfortably argue that the write-up may be hampered by inconsistency, ambiguity, poor clarity and boredom, especially where the audience is short of understanding the meaning of these jargons. Embracing peer revision improved my writing since my written  ideas were well framed, constructed, and organized; hence helped greatly in achieving my writing missions and objectives.

Importance of Reading and Free-writing

I also realized that reading enables the writer to amass ideas about the topic to be discussed. Reading helped me revise my ideas and objectives after reading others writings. Ideally, imperative of reading is to act as a revelation for the writer before or during the writing process. Through reading, I came to know pertinent approaches towards meeting and hitting my target on writing, improving on my objectives, ironing areas of concern regarding his writing. Reading before starting to write may also help in reducing redundancy on the topic, especially when the topic was previously covered. Therefore, I conclude that reading is critical in the field of writing since they both go hand-in-hand.

Free-writing involves a situation where a writer maintains consistent on writing geared by the flow of ideas without minding a stopover to relook at the structure, cohesion of grammar of the write-up (Kemp, 1994). This form of writing was imperative during my writing since it helped me develop a writing habit, build confidence, fluency in thought development, clarity of thoughts, and engenders personal voice in writing. This style of writing is vital at the initial stages of writing. I have also observed that the style prepares a novice writer be able to think freely, imaginatively, and introduce emotions and feelings in the writing. Allowing my emotions and feelings in writing placed in the core of the topic; thus increasing flow of thoughts as eases developing write-up at a fast rate. Therefore, I can conclude that free-writing is a critical step in the process of writing.

Importance of Referencing

Most writings involve introducing a new idea in a field or building the existing topics or subjects. In such cases, there are ideas that are lifted from previous studies and writings, which find their way into a writer’s work. However, it is considered academic theft to include other people’s ideas in a write-up without acknowledging them (The University of Auckland, 2013). In my writing borrowed ideals or observations from previous work should be attributed to them in  writing through referencing, both in-text and end text referencing. Referencing is vital in creating continuity especially in research work since it helps the reader understand the relationship between current and old ideas. In addition, it is a form of appreciating fellow writers; thus, building a solid cohesion among writers fraternity. Understanding proper format of referencing and in-text citation is not an option among writers. This skill is vital especially in the field of research were acknowledging other writers and incorporating their ideas in a writing enhances reliability, cohesion, trends of the topic, and convincingly sells the idea to the reader. The course enlightened me that proper referencing or lack of referencing can result to heavy fines in the academic arena; hence, writers should appreciate sound referencing.

In conclusion, peer revision, wide reading, and referencing are vital in the field of writing. Writers should also understand different approaches of writing starting with free-writing, which has ample benefits especially to novices in the writing field. I identified most of the imperativeness discussed in this paper during the semester course, and I believe they will empower me as I seek to develop further in the field of writing.