Introduction
Peer feedback is a critical instrument in the field of academic writing, in general, and in accounting, in particular. It has been long established that peer assessment of key areas of a student’s task performance helps them to develop writing proficiency. The findings of a study conducted by Bijami, Kashef, and Nejad (2013) show that peer feedback approaches the efficiency of instructors in enhancing a student’s ability to become an autonomous writer. Another study suggests that feedback is extremely valuable in improving the writing performance of assessments (Lu & Law, 2012). The aim of this paper is to report on the process of feedback incorporation in a persuasive essay.
Discussion
The revision of the first draft of the essay based on the peer review revolved around the incorporation of the following corrections: inclusion of a proper definition of corporate social responsibility (CSR), punctuation correction, and choice of alternative paragraphs and sentence structures. The peers have not provided any feedback on the strengths and validity of arguments presented in the paper; therefore, only the aforementioned feedback points were used to improve the writing.
The definition of CSR was borrowed from Przychodzeń and Przychodzeń (2014), who describe it as a business’ duty to act in a socially-responsible manner in the pursuit of monetary expansion. To further clarify the concept of CSR, it has been emphasized that it covers a social dimension of the organizational functioning, which is consistent with the definition provided by Miles and Miles (2013).
Upon reflecting on the process of argument development, the student realized that the provision of logical support was the most challenging because the premises were associated with a wide range of exceptional conditions. In order to improve the validity of the arguments, the student could have opted for less opaque premises that have a lower number of possible exceptions.
The student has not received any feedback concerning the exploration of the issue; therefore, they opted for introducing significant changes to the paragraph structure of the essay. Specifically, the revision of paragraphs was approached in a systematic manner to ensure that all of them contained topics, support, and concluding sentences that focused on a single idea. To this end, the following paragraph structure was followed: topic sentence, introduction, evidence, explanation, and conclusion.
No suggestions on the improvement of source integration have been provided by the peers, which prompted the student to take a proactive approach to ensure that all sources were properly cited. In addition, the academic literature informing the paper was reviewed to guarantee that authors’ opinions were properly represented.
The student incorporated the sources in the paper to add authority to the arguments. Therefore, only articles from peer-reviewed journals on the area of interest were used and properly acknowledged. For example, Waddock (2008) was cited to support the claim that many corporate executives lack proper CSR training. However, the student faced a challenge of diluting their own opinion with excessive quotations; therefore, the emphasis was made on sparse paraphrasing. A case in point is the use of condensed material from a study by Turner (2007), which shows that CSR can be perceived by some businesses as perilous. The strategic use of paraphrasing helped to improve the overall quality of the paper.
Conclusion
The paper has reported on the process of revising the persuasive essay through feedback incorporation. The peer feedback was discussed point-by-point to show how it shaped the final draft of the paper. It has been argued that feedback played a decisive role in improving the quality of the student’s writing.
References
Bijami, M., Kashef, S. H., Nejad, M. S. (2013). Peer feedback in learning English writing: Advantages and disadvantages. Journal of Studies in Education, 3(4), 91-97.
Lu, J., & Law, N. (2012). Online peer assessment: Effects of cognitive and affective feedback. Instructional Science, 40(2), 257-275.
Miles, P., & Miles, G. (2013). Corporate social responsibility and executive compensation: Exploring the link. Social Responsibility Journal, 9(1), 76-90.
Przychodzen, W., & Przychodzen, J. (2014). Corporate Social Responsibility for sustainability. Management and Business Administration, 22(2), 80–97.
Turner, M. (2007). Society must be protected: Polanyi’s “double movement” and the regulation of conflict goods. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 26(1), 85-99.
Waddock, S. (2008). Building a new institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. Academy of Management Perspectives, 22(3), 87-108.