Hi.

Of course students want proof-reading!  So do I, sometimes... positively no prizes for spotting typos in this mail.  The easy way out is always a temptation, and anyone under stress will be tempted.  Including those fragile beings called students.

We don't do proof-reading here at Hull - we frequently say so (and frequently have to say so) to students.  Except, of course, that we do.  Our basic work is based on half-hour appointments with students: usually we look at a draft, or an essay returned with negative feedback and disappointing mark, with the student.  The brief I give myself is 'teaching the student how to write better'.  I do this by working from the evidence in front of me, and asking the student why this error is here, 'did you know that this was slang?'  or 'what does this mean?', etc, etc.  It's best to guide the student to spotting error, which can often be done by asking her or him to read a given sentence aloud.  (The resulting giggles can be quite rewarding.)  This is, in a strict definition, a form of proof-reading.  But it is also teaching, which is what I think I do.  I don't think teaching can proceed without an element of amending a student's efforts  [By 'teaching', I hasten to add, I mean essentially helping learners to learn.]

In our case, the 'proof-reading' is limited by the half hour.  Students who are basically fine can have most of an assignment read in this time; some non-native speakers get much more teaching, and very much less proof-reading (= error-spotting), in that I can spend the whole time on one page of the draft or less - including disquisitions on principles such as the uses of the article, or the importance of pronouncing the endS of wordS, or the difference between the plural of nounS and of verbs, or fine semantic distinctions.  In that time, as in all [good] teacher/learner encounters, the human interaction takes over, and I trust leads to each learner making some progress in learning.  I do not think I materially add to the mark of the piece under discussion; I DO hope that I improve the marks for assignments written throughout the rest of the course.  (I have some feedback from departments that this actually happens.)

It is this human interaction - and the essentially personal nature of writing (and learning)that leads me to believe that the work is best done one to one.  Although this is undeniably more expensive than teaching classes, my own belief is that is vastly more cost-effective. I note that it is opposite to Sarah Williams' point: "We have also established a policy of doing no 1:1 work, only seeing learners in groups within courses or in workshop situations for specific study skills lessons:  we certainly find this cuts down the problem of being ‘approached’.", and I wonder about UWIC's funding of student support.  Their use of on-line seems to me to be quite like our face-to-face in one way - that it must mean a very elastic time allocation to each student, and will involve a personal interaction.  We also offer some on-line help, but I always advise students that half an hour face-to-face is much better value for them than the hour that the Study Advice Service gives me to work with an on-line query (not least because I am a slow and careless typist, and much of the time is swallowed up by my proof-reading my own work (usually in slapdash style).)

Can you tell that I have not had many appointments this evening?  I have certainly started thinking about this issue again.  I suppose that in the end I am happy to rely on my own sense of professionalism and of ethics to stop me doing improper thingsa for satudents.  That might not be enough for any rexternal assessor, of course.

Incidentally, does anyone else use the "Track Changes" option in the Reviewing Tolbar in Microsoft Word for on-line work?  I find it very helpful and easy - and a good sop to my conscience, in that I occasionally throw in a question into a Comment in order to make the student think (and to avoid actually making a correction).  I always SAVE such a text as AMENDED [filename - date], and edit the Properties to include [edited PMW] in the author field.  I started doing this when I was doing quite a lot of poof-reading [nice typo] as a private job, and wanted to keep some record that I was being an ethical teacher and not an unethical writer.  I have never actually been challenged.

Peter