#peer response

The paper, part of a bigger project, is to investigate how the students, in a student-centered pedagogical focus, perceive their own learning progress in e-peer feedback activities, including the effectiveness of the use of blogs for e-peer responses in an L2 writing class. Thirty-two 2nd year Vietnamese students at a university in Ho Chi Minh City participated in a 15-week writing course. Data collection was from in-depth interviews, semi-structured interviews and end-of-course questionnaires. Results of the study revealed that when students themselves assessed their own writing its quality improved in both global and local areas; moreover, their writing was lengthier after revisions. In addition, the students highly evaluated the use of blogs for e-peer responses because of its usefulness and effectiveness for their writing improvement. The study will be helpful for instructors who would like to apply a popular online medium for their writing courses.

Author(s) Details

Pham Vu Phi Ho Baria Vungtau University, Vung Tau City, Vietnam.

Nguyen Ngoc Hoang Vy Faculty of Foreign Languages, Van Lang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Peer observations: Rabbitley & S. Rendall

Grace Christiansen’s blog has an undeniable historical feel to it. From the header image which appears as a hand drawn castle on a blue, aquamarine and turquoise water painting, to the font chosen for the blog’s title as well as the title for the blog posts and the way in which Grace writes and describes each topic throughout the posts written on the blog, maintain this feeling throughout. Grace’s writing, while scholarly and impressively academic and formal, remained easy to read and to understand and maintained an overall theme throughout her blog of being a digital historical artefact that I thought was a great way of presentation.

Throughout Grace’s posts and writings, the opinions were informative, and the personal reflections were clear. I found Grace’s blog to be incredibly engaging as there was very visible evidence of thought, consideration and personalization throughout the blog itself and appeared like a true personal blog to the point where I could almost forget that the blog was created specifically for a university class.

Grace’s essay Artifact: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession was an incredible read, especially as I’ve always meant to research and learn more about the history surrounding the Tudors. I felt that the information and the critical analysis that Grace had included in her essay to be deeply thought provoking, I especially liked the way that she analysed the way that Elizabeth used paintings as propaganda “Elizabeth has positioned this figure [the warrior] close to Mary I and Philip to imply that her sister’s reign was one of violence and religious intolerance.”.

Samuel’s blog provides a minimalist feel to it, while plain, the black and white of the blog’s appearance ensured that there were very little distractions in form of colour or images that may have taken away from the content of his posts. The blog itself was easy to navigate and to read as the content was all readily available and there was little need to siphon through clickable links or navigation bars to find what it was that I was looking for.

Samuel’s post content was deeply engaging as the majority of the content within this blog were all topics that I have been interested in the past or presently. I found reading Samuel’s own thoughts, opinions and feelings of these topics incredibly interesting so as to have another perspective and insight on things that I had already made my own opinions on several of the topics and subject material. I also found it interesting to read about others challenges when faced with things that they may never have engaged in before, such as FanFiction and found myself increasingly impressed with how Samuel was able to engage with something that he hadn’t before.

Samuel’s essay on Warframe was also an intriguing read. Despite considering myself a gamer I hadn’t heard of Warframe until looking at Samuel’s blog. The personalization, the fandom integration into the games continued growth and development and the opportunities to become immersed into the game itself as well as its creation was something that I had not seen before. I also felt that Samuel’s inclusion of some of the negative aspects of the game or the drawbacks such as in-game purchases and the need to spend real money after downloading the game itself so as to have an easier time going through the story or levels that the gamer’s character faces. I though the essay itself was worded well, was deeply informative and showed a clear personal opinion at the end and kept me engaged enough to consider trying out Warframe for myself once I am able to immerse myself into something new.

Overall, I found my peers blogs to not only be intriguing but deeply captivating as I found myself reading every word with intense interest.

References

Curative Lists and What I Learned

Calem Roberts curative list on First-Person Shooter Video Games that Influenced the Genre was concise, easily read and easy to understand. Calem provided a short excerpt of each game’s history of which I found interesting as a gamer to go back and revisit some of the games that held such a strong impact on gaming culture and development over the years. He also included how each game was received by audiences upon its release, providing a clear indication as to why these specific games are those that influenced the First-Person Shooter genre and how these games impacted others included in the list that were released recently.

The list was factual which made it clear that each game had been thoroughly researched before it had been placed within the curation and including a visual image to show the gameplay of each game and the graphics added to interest.

Seth Nicholls curative list of video game relationships and the players involvement in them was broad, providing an assortment of different genre’s and types of games from fantasy to sci-fi and action to adventure. The explanations of the different kinds of dynamics and how they were important to the player was clear as were the explanations of how these dynamics and relationships impacted the story and the progression of the game itself. The list provided different kinds of relationships, from a Ruler and their subjects to the player and a romantic love interest and even familial-like relationships that incorporated the found family trope amongst friend groups.

I think this list could have been improved had the list been involved in a more specific genre rather than branching out into all possible genres so as to narrow down the list itself and provide information for a more specific audience or reader but overall I think the list itself was incredibly insightful and interesting to read.

Samuel Rendall’s curative list of Non-traditional or out of the ordinary heroes in eBooks was one of the most engaging lists that I read. The specificity of the list provided a much more intriguing concept that had me very invested in what and who was included in the list and why. The list itself had clear descriptions of why the characters themselves fit into the mould as well as small descriptions of the story’s plot. It was simple and easy to read and out of the list I even found an eBook that I was interested in enough that I purchased it.

I do think that this list could have benefited with a few more examples of how the “heroes” fit this specific mould of non-traditional heroes by incorporating more evidence from the source material but the list itself was interesting enough that I remained invested until the very end.

I think that all these curative lists could have been made even more intriguing and impactful if they had included a personal response from each blogger, if only to provide a greater insight as to the bloggers opinion on each piece.

References

Peer Response

The powder sparks, and with a snap,

The bullet flies, with a resounding crack.

Case after case, I litter the ground,

Mimicked by the bodies I bring down.

My owner and I have yet to rest.

Enslaved and bound, to this quest.

For day and night, we fight like mad,

And there is much more, to be had.

We’ve seen countless men, trudging through mud,

All with one wish, yes, only one.

To see an end to this long, long fight,

But alas, it’s nowhere in sight.

From the hills of Verdun, painted in blood,

To the trenches of Passchendaele, drowning in gas. 

We charged through Gallipoli, and were promptly pushed back,

Through the Argonne we marched, not given any slack.

I, like my owner, am covered in scars,

Our once proud figures, now disfigured and marred.

I feel his grip, loosen and fall,

He’s breathed his last; there’s nothing left at all.

His name will be remembered, and so will mine,

I am Springfield 1903, Number 301569.

The event taking place in the poem is World War I. The poem views it not from the soldier’s point of view, but from a soldier’s rifle. The title is supposed to be a reference to the rifle (I’m not too familiar with how guns work, but I’m guessing that it is related to the model of the rifle).

The poem is told from the perspective of an inanimate object; in this case, a rifle. Although the content of the poem is about a disastrous event, the tone of the speaker (rifle) is rather aloof and dull, as if it is feeling indifferent about the war. Although the content is dark, it feels as if the rifle is remaining untouched and unemotional. I think this adds a nice touch to the poem. Since the speaker is an inanimate object, the poem seems to be void of human emotions, which makes it seem more mysterious and intriguing in a way. I feel like I’m the rifle, and I’m witnessing the war from a bystander’s point.

There are six stanzas (five quatrains and a couplet), and it is a closed poem. The rhyme scheme is AABB. I normally struggle with following rhymes when writing a poem (it just doesn’t feel natural sometimes), but in this poem, I feel like Gareth did a really good job with the rhymes. The words don’t feel forced, and flow well with every line.

Peer response can be a useful tool for improving students’ writing.  This video, produced by Texas A&M University, exemplifies one type of peer response process, and shows examples of both how it can be done well and how it can be done poorly.

Another peer response process, one that I have found to be more beneficial to improving students’s writing, is to divide the peer response process into two stages.  

The first stage is review, where only higher-order issues are addressed.  Organization, descriptions, and plot/idea development must be addressed first, as it is pointless to edit a sentence for grammatical errors if that sentence will be cut or altered before the next draft of the paper.

Hello, class! This reading response is a bit more complicated than the past ones we've done. There are several steps.

FIRST: Read both articles posted on Moodle (one is a blog post, which I've also reblogged here for your convenience).

SECOND: Answer the following questions in a reading response post:

What is "emoeyeliner" critiquing in his post about Star Trek "Redshirts"?

What is he appealing to in order to make that critique?

What is Douglas Wolk arging about the digitization of comics?

What is he arguing about comics and the movie industry?

Are these two arguments compatible? How do the two ideas support each other? Or does one argument contradict the other? If so, how?

Post the above fairly quickly, so that you and your group members have time to respond to each other, as I ask you to do

THIRD: Before class on Wednesday, reblog and respond to one of your group member's posts.

Hello, class!

For Monday, reply to one of your group member's posts. I've sent a list out with everyone's Tumblr urls via email. To reply, reblog that member's post and add your thoughts above theirs.