Re: Query about proofreading

[cleveren@english.fsu.edu (Carrie Leverenz)]

Judy:  Here at Florida State, where all of the tutors are graduate student
TAs, we still have to deal with the request for proofreading, especially
from ESL students.  The first way we deal with it is by telling students
upfront that we do not proofread their papers but are willing to teach them
to proofread.  I've advised tutors to do a quick read through a paper trying
to find recurring errors, explain one error at a time error to the student,
show her how to fix the error the first 2 or 3 times it crops up, and then
set the student to fixing the error herself.  So in a typical 30-minute
tutorial, the tutor might spend 10-15 minutes doing this
evaluation/teaching, then ask the student to spend 10 minutes looking for
the error and trying to fix it, and the last 5 minutes discussing what the
student has done.  This strategy worked pretty well yesterday when a tutor
was working with a student whose first language was Spanish and was trying
to teach the student why sometimes in English we use "the" before a noun and
sometimes we don't.  I've pointed out to TAs who lack confidence in their
ability to teach grammar that we are doing students a disservice if we
ignore their need to learn how to proofread.  But it is also a disservice if
we merely proofread their work for them.  We do keep a list, however, of TAs
who are willing to do editing or proofreading for an hourly fee, so students
with serious difficult have that service available to them.  But we the
Reading/Writing Center as a teaching not a proofreading service.  Good luck.
Carrie Leverenz

>As a part of on-going staff development, we're covering in our next staff
meeting strategies for avoiding
>proofreading. The staff is particularly concerned about ways to avoid
proofreading when working with ESL
>students. I thought it might be useful if I collected some responses from
wcenter to share with my staff, who
>are primarily inexperienced undergraduates. 
>
>Would you mind making suggestions that I can distribute to my staff?
>
>Thank you.
>
>Judy Kilborn in St. Cloud, where they say we're going to get another two
inches of snow on top of the foot we
>got last week
>
>