There has been much interest recently in researching the changes editors, supervisors, and other language brokers make to the writing of L2 researchers who are attempting to publish in English. However, studies focused on the presubmission proofreading of students’ university essays are rarer. In this study of student proofreading, 14 UK university proofreaders all proofread the same authentic, low-quality master’s essay written by an L2 speaker of English to enable a comparison of interventions. Proofreaders explained their interventions by means of a talk aloud while proofreading and at a post-proofreading interview. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data reveals evidence of widely differing practices and beliefs, with the number of interventions ranging from 113 to 472. Some proofreaders intervened at the level of content, making lengthy suggestions to improve the writer’s essay structure and argumentation, while others were reluctant to do more than focus on the language. Disturbingly, some proofreaders introduced errors into the text while leaving the writer’s errors uncorrected. I conclude that the results are cause for deep concern for universities striving to formulate ethical proofreading policies.

中文翻译：

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学生写作的校对者对硕士论文有什么作用？不同的干预，令人担忧的发现

最近，人们对研究编辑，主管和其他语言经纪人对试图用英语发表的第二语言研究人员的写作所做的改变感兴趣。但是，针对学生的大学论文的提交前校对的研究很少。在这项有关学生校对的研究中，英国的14位大学校对员都对由英语为L2的母语者撰写的同一篇真实，低质量的硕士论文进行校对，以比较干预措施。校对员通过在校对时和校对后采访中大声讲解他们的干预措施。数据的定量和定性分析揭示了广泛不同的实践和信念的证据，干预的数量从113到472不等。一些校对者在内容级别进行干预，提出了冗长的建议以改善作者的论文结构和论点，而其他人则不愿只专注于语言。令人不安的是，一些校对员在文本中引入了错误，而作者的错误没有得到纠正。我得出的结论是，这些结果引起了大学努力制定道德校对政策的深切关注。