‘Teaching the writer to fish so they can fish for the rest of their lives’: Lecturer, English language tutor, and student views on the educative role of proofreading

Abstract

This qualitative study draws upon questionnaire and interview-based data collected from 32 disciplinary lecturers, 34 English language tutors, and 56 students (24 undergraduates, 32 postgraduates; 29 L1, 27 L2) to explore participants' beliefs about the educative value of the proofreading of student writing. No consensus emerged between or within parties, with a range of pro- and anti-educative views. Those who spoke of the educative value of proofreading claimed it was able to provide individualized learning opportunities, drawing learners' attention to knowledge gaps and recurrent errors, arming writers with learning strategies, raising their awareness of genre conventions, and pointing them to useful instructional materials. However, those espousing anti-educative views claimed that, unlike writing centre tutoring, proofreading was not a pedagogic experience, and that student writers had little desire to learn from a proofreader, simply accepting all the changes the proofreader had made to their text and quickly submitting for assessment. Such a variety of views points to the difficulties of introducing an in-house educative proofreading policy. The article concludes by exploring how educative proofreading could be embedded into university support services and its raison d’être effectively disseminated to all stakeholders.