How can students be encouraged to use writing to learn, as well as to think more critically, communicate better and build cooperative relationships with fellow students, under conditions of university expansion and underfunding? This article describes an action-learning project carried out at the University of Sussex investigating the use of peer and self-assessment exercises of pieces of writing by first year university students. We explore student responses to these exercises, which included initial anxiety and subsequent enthusiasm, and focus particularly on the fraught topic of peer assessment. We conclude that while "peer assessment" is often ill-conceived and inappropriately used in teaching contexts, "peer engagement" offers a productive model for building student collaboration, confidence and autonomy, and can be facilitated through the use of simple feedback exercises that can be built into the structure of a wide variety of courses.