To provide meaningful feedback to your peers you must follow certain rules. First and foremost, you must always stay positive. When critiquing someones else's work, staying positive is very important. Your job as a peer reviewer is to uplift the writer and to reveal errors you see in the work without discouraging the writer. The most important thing to remember is that no matter how bad someone's work may be, you should never take a negative approach to critiquing, doing so will only cause problems that will most likely not affect the writers work positively.
Another important component of peer reviewing is to make useful suggestions that are clear to the writer. When finding an error in the writers work, be sure to be specific on how it could be altered to be better. For an example, finding an error and just stating that it is an error without useful suggestions to the writer doesn't benefit the writer when he or she tries and correct the work. It's very important that the writer is told why what they have done is incorrect because without useful feedback, the writer could become discouraged or believe that the peer reviewer is just being negative towards their work. So the next time you are to peer review someones else's work, always remember that your job is to stay positive and to provide them with feedback that they can use to enhance their work.
