My past experiences with work shopping have been pretty consistent.

My teachers would
just tell us to read a friends paper and make suggestions. When work shopping
someones paper, youre not really supposed to change the style of the writing, but you
can make suggestions if the wording seems jumbled or if there are grammar errors or
syntax errors or things like that. That is how I was taught pretty much all the through
school. Just read and politely make suggestions, but I was never taught to be forceful or
act like the other person had to do what I suggested.
Revising is rearrangement of syntax and structure of the piece compared to editing, which
is more related to things like grammatical errors and format of the paper. Things such as
indentions and line spacing are examples of editing. When revising a piece, the focus is
more on how the paper reads and how it communicates to the reader. Editing is basic
formatting and more concrete things.
Concerns I have about peer work shopping include the fact that I tend to impose my
writing style on people and try to change too much. When this happens, I kind of pull
back and dont edit enough because I feel like Im going to end up trying to change too
much. Usually when I read peoples papers, I try not to leave grammatical errors, but I
dont really do a whole lot of revision.
He talks about keeping two or three mindsets when work shopping peoples papers. You
have to keep a balance between positive and negative feedback. You have to make sure
you think about how certain parts of the piece were interesting and in other places, it
could use some work.
o Straub, Richard. "Responding-Really Responding-To Other Students' Writing."
1999.
Another point he talks about is really considering everything before you start. You should
look over most of it and try to get an idea of the context and try to understand where the
author is coming from. This will help the responder more efficiently workshop the piece
and make helpful comments on the piece.
o Straub, Richard. "Responding-Really Responding-To Other Students' Writing."
1999.