Coaching vs. Editing

In order to get the most out of the Write Site, it is important to understand the difference between editing, tutoring and coaching services. As you will see from the commentary on the following paragraphs, the processes differ in purpose, focus and degree of collaboration between students and instructors. To illustrate these differences, the sample paragraph is taken with permission from a student essay.

Original Paragraph

Firstly, the Olympic Games provides an outlet for competition. Friendly competition among many countries around the world. Regardless of each countries financial situation, the competition is in the field of sports not politics. It provides people who have trained very hared a form or basis of comparison to others around the world. Giving these competitors the opportunity to find out if they are the very best. Also, along with providing an outlet for competition the Olympic Games creates a sence of nationalism. Nationalist pride is always a component of the Olympics, each country having its representatives. The Olympics seem to unify a country giving its citizens something in common, something that brings them altogether especially a victory. For example the acquisition of a gold medal or the number of gold medals in comparison to a competiting nation.

Edited Paragraph

Firstly, the Olympic Games provides an outlet for competition. They also provide Ffriendly competition among many countries around the world. Regardless of each country’s financial situation, the competition is in the field of sports, not politics. It The Games provides people who have trained very hared a form or basis of comparison to others around the world, Ggiving these competitors the opportunity to find out if they are the very best. Also, along with providing an outlet for competition, the Olympic Games creates a sense of nationalism. Nationalist pride is always a component of the Olympics, and each country has its own representatives. The Olympics seem to unify a country, giving its citizens something in common something that brings them all together, especially a victory. For example, the acquisition of a gold medal or the number of gold medals in comparison to a competing nations inspires national pride.

The changes to this paragraph are made without any grammatical explanations. This is because in general, an editor’s purpose is not to help authors improve their writing skills, but to prepare an original work for publication. In this writing situation, the author is assumed to understand the reasons for the changes and to know both grammatical norms and publishing requirements.  In addition, editorial changes follow established principles: that editors should strive to maintain an author’s original style and meaning, that editors should make as few changes as possible, and that they should highlight any changes for proofing by the author.

Coach-marked paragraph

Firstly, the Olympic Games provides an outlet for competition. Friendly competition among many countries around the world. Regardless of each countries financial situation, the competition is in the field of sports not politics. It^lmb1 provides people who have trained very hared a form or basis of comparison to others around the world. Giving^lmb2 these competitors the opportunity to find out if they are the very best. Also^lmb3, along with providing an outlet for competition the Olympic Games creates a sence of nationalism. Nationalist pride is always a component of the Olympics, each country having its representatives. The Olympics seem to unify a country giving its citizens something in common, something that brings them altogether especially a victory. For example the acquisition of a gold medal or the number of gold medals in comparison to a competiting nation.

*Red = verb form or tense error

Yellow= sentence structure error

Purple= spelling or punctuation error

*Note: The color coding on actual assignments may differ.

[lmb1] What is 'it'?

[lmb2] Both of these sentences are missing something. Can you tell what it is from our previous work on sentence structure?

[lmb3] Recall your work on transitional elements, and see this link for more on using transitions:: xxxxxxxx

In this case, the coach and the student work with writing from actual course assignments to improve the student’s writing skills.  The aim here is for students to learn about their usual error patterns and how to make necessary corrections. In other words, students should be working toward becoming independent writers. Here, the errors are highlighted but not identified except by type as indicated by the different colors or by a comment, thus helping students to recognize the types of errors they usually make. For the same reason, not all errors are highlighted. For example, the last sentence is not identified as a sentence fragment; instead, the student might be asked to edit the sentence, based on the coach’s previous comments. To enhance learning, a paragraph like this might be followed with a summary of resources and/or exercises aimed at improving this student’s unique errors. The coaching process emphasizes learning and makes certain that authorship of the piece remains with the student.

Student & Academic Services for Write Site - Last Updated October 12, 2012