The purpose of Comment is peer response—making it easy for you to give feedback to each other on your writing. Some of you may be thinking that you don't really care what your classmates think—you just want to know what the teacher thinks. Don't underestimate the usefulness of getting responses from other people—or of giving feedback.
Getting feedback
Obviously, the more people that read your essay, the better—especially when they know the purpose of the assignment, as your classmates do. You'll be getting responses from 2 or 3 classmates, and these responses should give you a good idea of what works and what doesn't in your essay.
Giving feedback
Though I don't think this is likely, let's assume the worst: that all the feedback you get from classmates is useless. It's still a valuable activity for you to give feedback, because in thinking about why someone else's essay is good or bad, you're helping yourself to see your own paper differently. Reading other essays helps you put your own work in perspective. Maybe you think you're a poor writer, but after seeing some other essays, you discover you're not as bad as you thought--or maybe you discover that there is room for improvement in your work. Either way, if you have thought about what makes for good writing, you've benefited.
Some suggestions
- say what's wrong—but do it nicely. If you are confused by a sentence, say so, and then try to help the writer see where you got confused. (Example: In this sentence, I’m not sure what you mean by “this”—are you referring to the navigation or to the section of the site you were looking at?)
- say what's right—we all like to hear good things about what we do. Simple comments like "Good, clear introduction" are very helpful.
What about grammar?
Don't worry about commenting on grammar, punctuation, etc. That's not the focus here. A technically perfect paper is useless if it doesn't do what the assignment calls for, so we always focus on content first, and then once the content is on track, we worry about getting the technical stuff right. That's how I approach all my feedback to students.
You will be graded by your classmates on the quality of the responses you give, so take the time to do a good job.
Don't wait till the last minute, because technical problems do arise some times. Finally, you were randomly assigned to groups.