Would it be ethical of a student for him/her to act as a proofreader/editor for other students' essays and homework?

Question

I'll be simple and direct, since the situation I'm asking after is pretty general, and hardly requires an anecdotal context.

Would it be ethical of a student for him/her to act as a proofreader/editor for other students' essays and works?

For example, students unfamiliar with English seek out this student for proofreading - this student corrects all the grammar and spelling errors in their papers, and fixes cases of terrible vocabulary (e.g. using "mail" instead of "male," or replacing instances of "spinning plane" with "helicopter" when it is clearly meant to be so).

And to further push the boundaries, this student gives critiques and advice of sorts. If Paragraph A doesn't make sense, they will advise them to rewrite it. If Paragraph B fits better as a conclusion, they will advise them to move it. If the essay suddenly dives into ill-fitting rambling for a page or two or goes off-topic, they will advise them to cut it.

Is this ethical?

Answer 1

As an student instructor, I would consider it ethical if certain conditions are met:

1. The proofreader isn't taking unfair advantage of the student, especially when paid for his services. There are plenty who call themselves 'tutors' who will use dishonest tactics; for instance, deliberately being unclear as to his editing methods in order to encourage continuing dependence on his services, making false criticisms of edits the student's friend made for free, or emotionally manipulating students who are from abroad.
2. The student isn't taking unfair advantage of the instructor. It's important that the student respects classroom policy on external assistance and observes the relevant boundaries when working with his editor.
3. The editor isn't taking unfair advantage of the instructor. It's not clear from your question whether the editor is in the same course as the writer, or merely at the same school. If the editor is enrolled in the same course, I'd consider it unethical for him to read through other students' work before his own is handed in.
4. The instructor isn't taking unfair advantage of the editor. There should be reasonable office hours to work with students, because that work is the responsibility of the instructor, not the classmates.

Answer 2

I believe it is good practice for students to proofread and edit each other's work. I also believe it is ethical, provided that

1. it is consistent with the professor's instructions,
2. the final product is still substantially the work of the student submitting it, and
3. it is properly attributed.

See, for example, my university's honor code (paragraph IV.C).

Answer 3

I'm going to offer a CS perspective from Germany, which may apply to other engineering fields, as well:

While there is quite some writing in CS, within my circle of academic contacts, we usually go by the rule: A few minor mistakes are sloppy and irritating, but are to be expected in long documents and therefore excusable. What is not excusable is failing to have someone else proofread the document. This is particularly (but not exclusively) true when writing in a foreign language, such as (for us) English.

So, in other words, having someone else proofread each of your more significant documents (theses, seminar papers, ...) is considered a part of due diligence. This is, of course, not limited to student assignments, but will continue during one's professional life - authors of a paper should always give the camera-ready version of a research paper to someone so far uninvolved to do some proofreading, for instance.

In the student context, preferrably, this proofreading should be done by a fellow student:

• They are likely to be savvy about the topic. This reduces the chance of false positives, where they consider something incorrectly written or expressed, which is actually correct in the terminology of the subject at hand.
• It is a good practice for them; like that, they will not just train writing, but also proofreading/correcting, which they will have to do efficiently also later on.
• As all students have to do the assignments, and all students need proofreaders, this allows for inherent compensation to some extent, as students can simply thank each other by returning the favour of proofreading.

As other answers remarked, it is important that proofreading is really that - identify mistakes, point out unclear or confusing statements and document structure, possibly suggest how to improve the text on an abstract level, but do not change anything other than the simplest of mistakes (straightforward typos that leave only one option for correction).

Concerning the attribution, I am undecided on whether it is obligatory:

• It is certainly the polite thing to do.
• In longer documents that feature acknowledgments (such as graduation theses), those acknowledgments provide a good opportunity for mentioning that the author received help by proofreaders. (Of course, not everyone puts acknowledgments in graduation theses; especially when the deadline is closing in, there are more essential parts of the document to work on.)
• Given that proofreading is, as explained above, an indispensable part of writing a document, and a rather "technical" one (just like, e.g., using a text editor), it is debatable whether it should be mentioned. Maybe it should, but in that case, the producers of one's text editing software, or the manufacturer of one's computer, should probably be mentioned just as well, which is rarely done.
• In shorter documents (especially papers with a page restriction), there is most probably simply no space to mention mere operational details of the paper writing process such as proofreading.

To summarize, I have rarely seen mentions of proofreading in documents, even though they occasionally do occur. Especially in student documents, when I do not find any mention of proofreading and I ask the student whether they have had someone else proofread their document, I am definitely much more dissatisfied with the answer "No, that's why I didn't mention it." than with the answer "Yes, of course; having someone else proofread my document before I hand it in is so self-evident that I do not see a point in specifically mentioning it."

EDIT: Whether or not to add an attribution may also depend on cultural customs. I recently brought up the topic concerning one of our papers in my department in Germany, when we had handed out that paper to a few colleagues from other departments for checking comprehensibility and clarity of the text (i.e. not restricted to spellchecking, but actual contents of the paper). My tentative suggestion to add a note in the acknowledgments thanking them for their suggestions was rejected as "silly" by my co-authors, because the colleagues from the other department "have just read the paper and suggested a few minor changes", and because "everyone always gives other people one's papers for external suggestions and those external people are normally never mentioned". People from other cultures might agree on different courses of action that are "normally" followed.

Answer 4

I think the answer depends on the course and here's why:

I, personally, teach business courses which require a lot of research and writing. My best friend teaches a creative writing course both of us teach at a mid-large university.

In my class I would not allow peer editing because of the nature of my assignments. Students often find similar resources for their answers so editing another student's paper will give the editor all the information (even if it's links alone) to complete the assignment.

In my friends creative writing course it's required that students do peer-evlauaiton because it will improve the writers skill by seeing how someone else views their work, style, and even catch grammar mistakes that the writer often uses. Additionally, each individual paper will be vastly different in a creative writing course.

In my course writing skills such as knowing the difference between "male" and "mail" are annoying to deal with but it's not something I will take off points for because I do not teach spelling, grammar, or anything to do with the English language. However, if the paper is unreadable or lacks the effort of using English to the best of the students ability then points will be removed.

Answer 5

At least one university in the UK provides this type of service free to all non-native English users at undergraduate level and upwards, via bookable "office hours" type consultations as well as by running regular courses, English language workshops, etc. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/academic-english

That avoids any blurred boundaries between "improving the quality of language use", "unauthorized collaborative work" or "plagiarism" caused by informal arrangements between students.

Answer 6

The question of morality might be able to be circumvented entirely if the school offers any sort of writing services. I know my college (and I've heard many colleges) have a writing center which employs and trains students to proofread writing. It's their college endorsed job to help the students who might have trouble with this kind of thing, and since they have been trained, they're much less likely to overstep their boundaries. Classes might also have a TA/TAs that would also be able to help.

That being said--if that option not available at this university (which I'd find strange) or if students choose not to use it--I would still be ok with students reading each other's work, as long as they're transparent about what they've done. Peer reviews are used in lower levels of education to build student's writing skills. When I was a TA in a Freshman level college course, we encouraged students to go to each other as a resource--as long as they followed the school's honor code. It's better for the students to be able to learn before they send the paper in, rather than be punished for it after it and, let's be honest, professors don't have time to proofread every paper before it comes to them.

The same goes for critiques. As long as the second student doesn't rewrite the paragraph for them, they're doing a service to the first student and everyone who has to teach them later on. The idea that instructors are the only people who should be allowed to help students improve their writing is absurdly limiting.

Answer 7

It depends on the situation. This is very essential when we talk about journals. Because such unfamiliar proofreader's understanding/suggestions greatly help to make simple/clear the content of the topic/essay, especially to the newcomers in that topic. Switching to your case, it is also necessary but not always. Because some students have a bad tendency to depend on others during their homework instead increasing their skills in it.

Answer 8

I would say that it is not (unless explicitly permitted), since essay answers are graded in part based on writing -- writing instruction takes place implicitly not just in English classes. In my classes, well-constructed arguments and sentences are as much a part of the grade as knowing the factual answer. However, in some classes, instructors don't care about expression and they are only grading based on knowledge of content (but for some reason cannot reduce the exercise to check-boxes). If the instructor explicitly allows writing assistance, then okay. Otherwise, you have to consider that the instructor considers content and expression to both be valid bases for evaluating a paper.

Answer 9

Unless there is a prohibition of this activity by the instructor, there is nothing unethical about this, because the students have specifically requested your help, and because your help consists of editing something they have already written by themselves. You are providing assistance in how to best render their composition in the English language; as long as your function remains that of an editor, not a composer, no ethical problem should arise.

Answer 10

It's frustrating for those who are teaching writing, those papers that "my cousin" helped me with. I'm talking about non-native students in a native-student class -- in a class for second-language students, it should never happen. I'd like to teach them those things, rather than having someone else just do it for them, and see their grade based on what they can actually do, rather than on what someone else can do for them. A trained tutor won't simply change things but will take the student through the process, so that they understand why they are making the changes. Once they start having someone else just correct their work, they have to keep doing it. And then when they get out in the real world, they haven't learned how to do it for themselves.

Answer 11

There's a way to handle this that prevents this situation from turning into something it shouldn't.

Let's refer to the non-native speaker requesting assistance as Student A. We'll refer to the tutor/proofreader as Student B.

If Student A enlists help from Student B, Student A should turn in two copies of the paper. The first copy is the original draft with red-pen annotations from Student B. The second copy is the revised copy, typed by Student A, after receiving the feedback from Student B.

This way, there is some traceability. You can see exactly how much of the ideas belong to Student A, and you can see how much assistance was provided by Student B. Hopefully, the changes are largely cosmetic (there to their, e.g.), and the grader doesn't have to wade through all these problems and provide feedback during grading. It's a win-win.

If Student B is willing to assist Student A in this capacity, I don't think it needs to be prohibited, it just needs to be acknowledged and attributed. In fact, Student A wouldn't necessarily need to be a non-native speaker. Two students could proofread each other's papers with the aim of turning in higher quality work, so long as the instructor accepts this step as an acceptable form of help.