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Abstract
This close analysis of positive peer responses as written by forty students in first-year composition seeks to explore how students understand commenting as rhetoric. The study integrates a discussion of the dynamics among praise, critical feedback, and authorship within the context of an increasing shift from in-person oral to asynchronous online peer review. Using data produced by her own students, the author examines why and how positive feedback features importantly in the student commenting genre. Through an analysis of comments composed in 117 online peer review documents, this study reveals an important connection between student praise and critical feedback as well as suggests a need for composition instructors to teach online peer review as both writing and rhetoric.