Peer Review for Christine’s Definitions

TO: Christine Pang, CARE Team Member
FROM: Erica Friedman CARE Team Member
DATE: January 20^th, 2019
SUBJECT: Review of Your Three Definitions Assignment

I was excited to see that you had chosen the term ‘body dysmorphic disorder’ for your assignment. I am a Psychology major and I’ve always been fascinated by that class of disorders.

Voice: The methods for expansion and language used are suitable for an audience that has taken the 1^st year Introduction to Psychology course.
 
Clarity/organization: Your assignment was well organized. You stayed on topic, chose appropriate and helpful expansion strategies, and used excellent resources. I did have to make an effort to understand the visual definition, but the accompanying description was helpful, and the visual reflects the complexity of the disorder and is appropriate for the audience.

Language/sentence structure: To improve clarity, it would be helpful to edit the longer sentences and break them down into smaller fragments.

For example, here is your sentence definition:
Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental disorder characterized by consistent distress over perceived flaws in one’s physical appearance that are nonexistent, or barely noticeable by others, causing repetitive behaviours and problems in social, occupational, and psychological functioning in patients.

The definition can be broken down into two smaller sentences. The second sentence here is more direct than the clause in the original text.
Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental disorder characterized by consistent distress over perceived flaws in one’s physical appearance that are nonexistent, or barely noticeable by others. A patient with body dysmorphic disorder engages in repetitive behaviours and experiences problems in social, occupational, and psychological functioning.

Another way to improve clarity, to shorten sentences and strengthen the definitions would be to remove extra words; where one word could be used instead of three, or where two words in the same sentence have the same meaning.

For example, here is a fragment from your negation definition:
Most individuals will encounter thoughts of criticism towards their own appearance in their daily lives, but body dysmorphic disorder manifests more severely alongside maladaptive interpretations of one’s own thoughts towards their own appearance.

encounter thoughts of criticism towards = be critical of/think negatively of

own appearance in their daily lives = own appearance at times

one’s own thoughts towards their own appearance = one’s thoughts towards their own appearance

There is one grammatical error in the audience description; you wrote, “All students have completed the prerequisite course of first year psychology and is prepared…”. The sentence should read “are prepared”, in agreement of the plural students.

I hope that my recommendations are helpful. I think you have chosen a great term to define and look forward to reading your final draft. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.