The Fellow Review

The Fellow Review

The process was really fun. All cliché out the door, I truly mean that. It was great to have experienced the reactions of others to my writing; it truly was for me anyway, to know what my fellow students thought of my paper about “Literacy”, from a different cultural perspective.

Here I am, trying my hardest to interpret sounds, emotions, situations, events, words and everything in between, into some short and sweet English verbs, adverb and adjectives, just to set the background of my story. Before I realize that my paper was too long and boring, I was already on page five. But my fellow reviewers were graceful in their comments.

You see, it’s important to absolutely understand a question one is being asked to write about before writing your first line. Because once that pen hits a surface, one can only imagine where it’ll end. It truly depends on the subject matter. Here I am, writing about LITERACY in a society with extremely complex cultures, not just one or four or even ten, we are talking about tens of languages influenced by several hundreds of other languages. Had it been another topic I would understand the need for short and sweet and right to the point, but it is about Literacy. No matter which part of my society one was from, the mere idea that his or her experiences or definitions of Literacy could be fully expressed in a couple of pages is difficult.

From the fellow review, I learned that short and precise is better at times for one’s readers. As I mentioned earlier, my group was constructive in their comments and they also took interest in my story during our oral discussions in the classroom. I learned a few things about myself, through this process.