Who proofreads the student reports in your school? As a teacher, do you need to check reports you’ve written yourself? Or are you in charge of proofreading all the reports for a form or year group? If the reports are in a suitable format (including Word and Excel), it’s a good idea to run a spellcheck to make sure there are no typos in the reports before they’re sent out. But there are some mistakes that spellcheck won’t be able to find. This happens when you accidentally type another word that’s also in the dictionary. For example, if you meant to type ‘from’, spellcheck will underline ‘fomr’ but it won’t pick up on ‘form’, because form is a valid word. You might notice the error as you’re reading through, but if you’re checking a whole set of fairly similar teacher comments, you could easily miss it: your brain wants you to see the word that you expect to see, not the one that’s really there. So, what can you do to catch those kinds of momentary slips? One way to pick up on these mistakes is to use the ‘Find’ tool in Microsoft Word. Before you start reading the reports, search for words that you know are often mistyped, such as those containing very similar letters. Then you can check each instance to make sure the right word has been used for each context. Here are some of the mistyped pairs that we’ve often found when checking school reports for School Proof. You could use this checklist as a start and add any others you find as you go along. In this first list, the word on the right is usually correct in school reports. (Check each context carefully, though – for example, the RS teacher won’t be talking about Jesus and his disciplines!)
And here are some pairs where either word may be correct, depending on the context.
Make sure you search for each word in each pair, because which one is right will depend on the context. You could also search for acronyms that are often mistyped, such as ‘GSCE’ instead of ‘GCSE’ – spellcheck won’t pick up on these unless you add them to the dictionary.
Speeding up the checks
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Laura Ripper, School Proof Is it reasonable to expect a teacher’s written English to be faultless? Many people seem to expect teachers to be able to send home reports without making a single mistake – but they wouldn’t bat an eyelid if a best-selling author had their book copy-edited or a professional copywriter had their website text proofread. Why is this? Perhaps it’s because school reports are so highly valued – what a teacher writes about how a child is doing at school makes a lasting impression on the family, and the reports are often kept for many years. For some, the quality of the report reflects the quality of the education that the school provides. A carefully written report, free from mistakes, sets a good example to students too. But every writer makes ‘slips of the pen’ with grammar, spelling and punctuation – best-selling authors, proofreaders (especially in emails to important clients) and, yes, teachers. So how can a professional proofreader help? Spotting typos any writer could miss When you’re focusing on the overall gist of what you want to say, it’s difficult to concentrate on the detail. It’s easy to type ‘form’ instead of ‘from’ or ‘god’ instead of ‘good’. It’s just as common to miss out an article (for example, ‘Hannah is wonderful student’). Or Autocorrect might decide that you want to key in ‘defiantly’ instead of ‘definitely’. Copying a generic sentence from one report to another can lead to the wrong name or gender being used. It’s normal for any writer to make these kinds of slips. Even if you have time to check your reports, you might not spot a mistake. That’s because your brain wants you to see what you think you’ve written, not what’s actually there. Spellcheck won’t pick up on these things, so they can easily end up in the final version. A proofreader won’t have seen your reports before, so they won’t have any expectations about what you’ve written. That makes it easier for them to notice typos, repeated or missing words, and other mistakes that we all make when writing. Checking grammar Language evolves, and the grammar ‘rules’ that were accepted a little while ago might now have changed or be thought of only as matters of style. What’s more, a thorough knowledge of grammar isn’t what makes a brilliant art, maths, PE, IT or science teacher. Some teachers (for example, native speakers of languages taught) might speak English as a second language. Just like many other professionals, teachers might confuse ‘practice’ (the noun) with ‘practise’ (the verb) or accidentally write ‘could of’ instead of ‘could have’. A professional proofreader deals with usage points every day as part of their job, so they’re in an ideal position to pick up on anything that doesn’t sound natural. Removing inconsistencies In secondary-school reports, subject teachers usually write different sections of the same student’s report. Even if all the teachers have perfect English, that can lead to inconsistencies. For example, in UK English, if one teacher writes that a student is very ‘organised’ and another writes that the student is ‘organized’, neither teacher is wrong – it’s a style choice. But to the person reading the whole report, these variations can look like mistakes. Some schools like to be consistent about certain style choices – for example, whether or not to capitalise subject names, use abbreviations, allow contractions, use students’ pet names or use ‘-ise’ or ‘-ize’ endings. Professional proofreaders can help by ironing out these kinds of inconsistencies, keeping to the school’s style preferences across all the reports. Using software – as well as a trained human eye – makes this process as accurate and speedy as possible, meaning it’s cost-effective for the school. Checking the meaning is clear When you’re pushed for time, it’s more difficult to check that what you’ve written is clear enough for parents and students to understand. Sometimes, because you know what you intended to say, you won’t notice that a sentence is ambiguous. The length of a sentence can get out of hand too, making it harder for the reader to follow your train of thought. Added to that, it’s easy to use jargon and abbreviations that parents might not be familiar with. Professional proofreaders are trained to spot these issues and correct them, suggest an alternative or write a query so you can put it right. All this helps to make sure that your writing expresses what you want to say and to avoid any misunderstandings between teachers and parents. Proofreaders can also point out any contradictions between teachers’ comments, along with any language that doesn’t set the tone your school prefers (for example, colloquial expressions or language that could be misconstrued). Saving you time Teachers often have to write numerous reports in a short space of time. Because the reports have to be up to date, you can’t take weeks to write and then check them. So, as mentioned in this article in the Times Educational Supplement, reports are ‘often written as rush-jobs, late into the night, by teachers with other things on their minds’. Sending the reports off to a professional proofreader can free up teachers and other staff to do the work that they do best. That means fewer members of staff have to spend time checking the reports. Often, the reports can be checked more quickly too, as a result of greater efficiency. All this means teachers can spend the limited time they’ve set aside for writing reports on what matters most: telling parents about how their children are doing at school. Improving quality The checks that a professional proofreader is trained to do all help schools make sure that good-quality reports are sent home, creating a good impression and building the school’s reputation. Your chosen proofreader is there to provide support, checking your reports with thought and care so you can feel confident when they go out. That frees you up to focus on what’s most important – teaching! More information If you’d like to find out more about working with a proofreader, please feel free to contact us.
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AuthorSHelen Stevens and Laura Ripper are the School Proof proofreaders Archives
August 2019
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