Citing a lack of discussion about the particular effect of giving peer feedback, this study of student perceptions and actual practice seeks to map out and account rather for the benefits afforded by both sides of the online peer review process. A group of 61 university English education majors completed seven peer-to-peer (P2P) process writing tasks during one semester and then completed an in-house developed P2P perceptions questionnaire. Results suggest encouraging continuities between the peer review practice itself and its role in alleviating student writing anxieties. In so doing, the study hopes to provide a better understanding of the training students need in order to benefit from computer assisted collaborative learning activities such as P2P writing tasks. While students proved able to focus on a wide range of different grammar, content, and organizational aspects of their peer’s work, they appeared also to enjoy the responsibility of helping one another improve their writing. Furthermore, they reported a larger number of higher-level improvements associated with the giving part of the peer review process than with the feedback received. Finally, this accounting of student perceptions the peer review process correlate positively with an analysis of their actual peer comments, and provide therefore insight into the language learning strategy training afforded by the P2P process as well as into its mitigating effects on L2 writing anxiety.