Conclusion

Peer review is universally viewed as an activity most beneficial for weaker writers. The general consensus is that this group of writers will be more prone to errors in their writing and these errors will be caught during the peer review process. Therefore, their writing will greatly improve from peer review. On the other hand, stronger writers will make fewer mistakes in their writing and because of this most people believe that strong writers do not benefit from peer feedback. In fact, sound writers are thought to gain very little, while giving up a lot during peer review. They spend lots of time improving the works of others and get feedback from others that is useless or invalid because it comes from an inferior writer. However, this viewpoint is inherently flawed. Everyone, regardless of writing level, gives valuable feedback and in addition, peer reviewing is a worthwhile activity for the reviewer. Each person reads papers from their own view and therefore may question things the writer didn’t think of initially. Additionally, the feedback of those that are generally the weakest writers, ESL students, have been shown to be overwhelmingly beneficial. Very few points of feedback they give actually hurts the quality of a writing (Jacobs 1989). With regards to the benefits of peer feedback for the reviewer, the process of finding errors in others’ writings builds critical thinking skills and helps writers self-correct their own mistakes in their writing. Overall, peer feedback is beneficial for everyone, but myths and generalizations have misconstrued this into a belief that it doesn’t benefit the strongest writers at all.