Hansen and Liu’s text is useful in that it is really
straightforward; it presents one by one the techniques that are known to foster
good peer reviewing in class. I first want to point out that it is interesting
to see the way in which all the principles mentioned by the authors focus on
having the student at the center of the learning process. The majority of the
principles they advocate are to be used before the peer response process
itself, they aim at giving students all the tools they need to work on peer
response by themselves; meaning that they are taught not simple facts about
peer reviewing but they are rather taught the skills to peer review. I believe
this to be very effective considering that these skills will be useful for a
whole life. An activity which I find of particular interest is the mock peer
activity. I believe that humor has its place in a class, especially in a SLA
class, as one of the greater barrier to learning a second language in class is
anxiety. Everybody likes humor; having students imagine sentences they should
not use in such an activity would therefore be really effective because most
students would listen (yes, everybody wants to laugh) and thus everyone
understand and acquire skills.
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