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Will You Proofread My Paper?
As a writing specialist in The Writing and Research Center, this is one of the questions I hear most often. Unfortunately, the question can be hard to answer because students typically have different meanings for their questions. Four common meanings come to mind.
However, before I can attempt to answer the question, I have to ask some questions of my own. Typically, if you come to me for assistance, I will ask you for the name of the course and the name of the instructor. Then, I will ask you if you have an actual printed copy of the assignment, so I know exactly what the teacher wants. If you don’t have a printed copy of the assignment, I will ask you to explain the assignment to me. Finally, I will also ask for the length of the assignment and the due date. Once I have the answers to all those questions, I can try to answer the proofreading question. As I mentioned above, proofreading means different things to different people.
First, the proofreading question sometimes means, “Will you read my essay and let me know if that’s what my teacher wants?” This question usually occurs when a teacher asks for an essay that you, the student, have never written before. For example, the teacher might ask you for an analysis of a poem or a short story. Many students assume the teacher wants to know simply what the poem or story is about, so they write the essay just as if they were writing a high-school book report with all the facts: who, what, where, when, why, and how. When this happens, I’ll read the essay and, then, explain that the teacher probably doesn’t want simply a summary of the facts of the work. After all, the teacher is already familiar with the work; instead, what the teacher really wants, in most cases, is a review or critique of the work that explains its strengths and weaknesses. In other words, the teacher wants to see your thoughts or interpretation of the work.
Next, the question sometimes means, “I’m not feeling very confident about this essay, so will you please read it and tell me that it’s okay?” Young writers, in particular, are likely to ask this question. You may be a great writer, and you may understand the assignment perfectly, but you…
