My experiences with workshops have been bad and good.

During high school, I had peers that thought it was okay to rewrite the whole paper. I would always stress out about what my peers would think about my writing. Since I am not a great writer, I felt like people would judge me. During English 1101, my teacher and peers were helpful. I did not feel like I was being judged because everyone was in the same position I was. My experience with teacher feedback has been good and bad. In high school, my teachers would only fix my grammar mistakes. I would have trouble with thesis statements and ask for help and my teacher would say that it was fine. My teachers would say that my papers were fine and needed nothing to change, but when I got my papers back I would have a bad grade. In English 1101, my teacher gave me wonderful feedback. She brought my writing confidence up. I do not like peer workshops because some peers take it too seriously and rewrite your paper. In the article, Straub states Youre not a cruise missile meaning you do not attack the students papers.1 After reading this article, my concern for peer workshops is that I do not know if my peers will understand my writing. Editing and revision are two different forms of review. Editing involves making sure the paper is free of grammar and mechanical errors. Revision involves making changes to the papers organization, structure, and content. Editing is the last stage of the writing process because when you revise your paper you can completely change your whole paper. You have to do both revising and editing, but in the correct order. If you were to edit first then revise, you might delete all of what you just edited and wasted your time looking for grammatical and mechanical errors. One suggestion Straub has for a reader is to sound like you typically sound when you are talking with a peer.2 In my experience, I know some of my peers try to sound professional so they sound like a teacher and it confused me because they did not know what they were talking about. Another suggestion is when commenting Dont be stingy meaning write full statements in the margins about what changes need to be made.3 I will definitely use these suggestions during workshops because when I read papers I do not give enough comments or do I sound like a myself when commenting.
1

Richard Straub, Responding Really Responding to Other Students' Writing, 137. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 140.

Full Citation: Straub, Richard. Responding Really Responding to Other Students' Writing. In The Subject Is Writing 2nd Edition, edited by Wendy Bishop, 136-146. Portsmouth: Boynton/ Cook Publishers, 1999.