A student arrives at the writing centre with a draft due on Friday: can you check it? The quickest help is to fix what you see, and it is the help most writing centres forbid. A draft a tutor has fixed is no longer wholly the student's, and the student learns nothing for the next one.
The alternative is writing tutor feedback anchored in the assignment's own brief and marking criteria: what was asked, where the draft does it, what is missing, put as questions. This guide, published by EdCitation for tutors, writing-centre staff, peer mentors and academic skills advisers, covers what published policies allow, what feedback research says, and a thirty-minute session plan on a real MIT brief. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads the brief into rules beforehand, and the student can run Theoretics QA and Verify references on their own draft first. Like a good tutor, EdCitation never writes any part of a paper. Pages cited were read on 23 September 2026.
What may a writing tutor do with a student's draft?
A writing tutor may read a draft with the student, ask questions, explain a problem and teach a strategy; a tutor may not edit, proofread or write any part of it. The policies read here agree on that line and differ on how close to the content a tutor may go.
What writing centres say
The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says its coaches will not edit or proofread a paper "or write any part of your paper for you" (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, n.d.-a). Its policy page adds that coaches do not write on drafts, "or otherwise insert their own words in the student's text", and that a session begins with coach and student reading the assignment and the paper together (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, n.d.-b).
Manchester Metropolitan University (n.d.) asks students wanting written feedback to upload the assignment brief with the draft. Its Academic and Study Skills Tutors, not subject specialists, comment on a sample for the student to apply to the rest, and will not proofread or correct the work.
Where the policies part company
They part on content. UNC's coaches discuss arguments, organisation and evidence; the UK writing centre studied by Liu and Harwood (2022) prohibits proofreading and "helping with content". One working rule satisfies both: a tutor may ask about the argument, and never supplies it. Liu and Harwood describe the orthodox position as no proofreading and higher-order concerns, such as structure, before grammar, and note that some researchers argue for relaxing it with second-language writers.
The line slips easily. Of the 33 Chinese international students they interviewed, 28 said a tutor had proofread for them; none of the seven tutors interviewed said so, yet some drafts showed it. The director's two habits hold the line: the student holds the pen, and the tutor helps the student answer questions rather than supplying the answer.
Where does university proofreading policy draw the line?
Proofreading policies draw it at the sentence: a third party may correct small slips of spelling, punctuation and grammar, and must leave argument, facts, structure and references alone. The University of Edinburgh's guidance of May 2024 is among the most specific (University of Edinburgh, Academic Services, 2024). A proofreader may make tracked edits to minor, localised slips and comment on larger problems of clarity without correcting them. They must never touch the order of information or the line of argument, add or rewrite content, comment on whether facts are true, touch formatting, reference lists or the referencing system, translate, or cut words to meet a limit.
It names who counts as a third party: a friend, a family member, a paid professional or a company. A peer mentor reading a friend's essay is one. The guidance excludes supervisory input by academic staff but does not say where a university writing tutor falls, and we could not confirm that from the document. Where your own university is silent, work to the stricter line.
Why should feedback start from the brief?
Feedback should start from the brief because feedback closes the gap between the work and a goal, and the brief is the goal, written by the person who will mark it. Hattie and Timperley (2007) put three questions at the centre of effective feedback: where am I going, how am I going, and where to next, or feed up, feed back and feed forward. In a session, the brief answers the first, the draft read against it the second, and the student's next steps the third. Goals with no clear sign of when they are met, they add, are often too vague to help.
The level of the comment matters
Hattie and Timperley (2007) sort feedback into four levels: the task, the process, self-regulation, and the person. Praise of the person is the least effective; process and self-regulation feedback are powerful for deep learning. Their example of self-regulation feedback could be a tutor's: you know what an argument's opening needs, so check whether your first paragraph has it. Feedback also helps most with a faulty interpretation, not a total lack of knowledge: a student who has never been shown a literature review needs teaching first.
How large the effect is, and the disagreement
Hattie and Timperley's average effect of 0.79 came from 12 meta-analyses covering 196 studies. Wisniewski et al. (2020), with Hattie as co-author, pooled 435 studies and found 0.55, or 0.48 once extreme values were removed; 17% of the effects were negative. Information made the difference: high-information feedback, on what went wrong, why and what to do next, reached 0.99, reward and punishment 0.24. Neither review measures writing-centre sessions, and the effects' median publication year is 1985; both still say that what, why and what next beats a verdict.
How do I run a thirty-minute session against the brief?
Spend the preparation on the brief, the first minutes on the goal, most of the session on two or three gaps, and the last five minutes on the student's own list. UNC's appointments run 45 minutes on its FAQ page and fifty on its policy page; thirty forces a choice.
- Before: read the brief and the marking criteria. Paste them into Check your paper, free with no account, for the countable rules; then read the whole brief yourself, because the checklist does not hold everything.
- Before: list every requirement, rules first, then what the essay must do, in the brief's words.
- Minutes 0 to 5: ask what the task asks, in the student's words, and compare it with the list. A misread question is the most valuable find (does my paper answer the assignment question has the student's side).
- Minutes 5 to 15: the student shows where the draft meets each line, and marks it met, partly met or not yet on their own copy.
- Minutes 15 to 25: the gaps, as questions. Pick the two or three lines that carry most weight, usually the question, the thesis and the evidence, and ask rather than rewrite.
- Minutes 25 to 30: next steps in the student's words, three to five, each tied to a line of the brief. Check each is doable; change none of the wording.
- After: record what was discussed, not what to write. UNC's coaches write a short, non-evaluative summary and, with an undergraduate's permission, send it to the instructor.
Questions that point without rewriting
A question makes the student find the answer in their own draft; a correction hands it over.
| Line of the brief | Ask | Rewriting would be |
|---|---|---|
| Answer a question | Which sentence states the question your essay answers? | Suggesting the question |
| A clear thesis | Read me the sentence that answers it. Where does a reader first meet it? | Drafting the thesis |
| Trustworthy sources | Which sources carry your main claim, and what kind is each? | Finding sources for them |
| Sources in conversation | Where do two sources disagree, and does the essay say so? | Writing the comparison |
For sentence-level slips, explain one instance of a pattern and let the student find the others, much as UNC's coaching on recurring errors and Manchester Met's sampled comments do.
A worked example: an MIT investigative essay brief
The brief is the Investigative Essay set by Boiko (2018) for MIT's 21W.035, Science Writing and New Media, on MIT OpenCourseWare. The essay investigates an aspect of science, medicine or technology and must "aim to answer a question". It asks for 2,500 to 3,000 words, at least eight sources including two books and a journal article, a title and three to four headings that are not "Introduction" or "Conclusion", and Nature style citations. The revision comes with a checklist and four questions to answer.
What Check your paper read
We pasted the description, the requirements and the revision checklist into the instructions reader that EdCitation's Check your paper runs. Four rules came back:
| What it asks | Asked for | Read from |
|---|---|---|
| Line spacing | 2× | "double-spaced (2500–3000 words)." |
| Page count | At least 6 pages | "For the first draft: Hand in at least 6 pages of coherent work." |
| Word count | 2,500 to 3,000 words | "double-spaced (2500–3000 words)." |
| Sources | At least 8 | "At least 8 sources, at least 2 of which must be books, and one must be a journal article." |
Eight sentences were set aside as needing judgement, among them the question the essay must answer, why the topic matters, the call for a true "re-seeing" in revision, and handing in the four questions with answers. The Nature style sentence, which also asks for the References, was set aside whole.
What the tutor changes before the session
- Untick the page count. Six pages is the first draft's minimum; the revision runs eight to ten.
- Add the kinds of source: two books and a journal article, shown in the sentence but not checked by the number.
- Add what appeared in neither list: the title, the headings rule, and every item of the revision checklist, from a clear target audience to numbered pages and introducing key authors in the text.
That is why step 1 is reading the brief, not only pasting it: checking the checklist against the brief is the close reading a session needs.
The session, traced
Invented for this example: a 2,800-word revision on whether testing wastewater can warn of disease outbreaks. Its headings are Introduction, Background, Evidence and Conclusion; it has seven sources, one a book; the question is in paragraph one and nothing answers it.
| Line | The tutor asked | Next step, in the student's words |
|---|---|---|
| Answer a question | Where does the essay answer the question in your first paragraph? | Write my answer as one sentence and decide where it goes |
| Headings, not Introduction or Conclusion | What does your first section do that a heading could name? | Rename the first and last headings to say what they argue |
| At least 8 sources, 2 books | Which claim needs more support? | Find a second book for the history part |
Nothing there was written for the student, and each step is tied to a line the marker will read. The brief's own workshop instructions ask peer readers for the same: start with what works, bring questions for the writer, and "make it a conversation" (Boiko, 2018).
What can EdCitation do before a tutoring session?
EdCitation does the part of the preparation that is checking and none that is writing: it reads the brief into rules, and lets the student check their own draft and sources against it before they arrive.
| Preparation | Who runs it | EdCitation tool | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| The brief read into rules, each beside its sentence | Tutor or student | Check your paper | Free, no account |
| The draft checked against the brief, with quotations | The student | Theoretics QA | Max, $24 a month |
| Every reference looked up, retractions flagged | The student | Verify references | Free, no account |
| Comments and tracked changes left in the file | The student | Mechanics QA | Pro, $8 a month, or three checks a month free with an account |
Check your paper and Verify references, free
Check your paper accepts a brief, a rubric or both, as text or a file, and reads out word limits, headings, sources, style, font, spacing and margins, each beside its sentence; anything misread can be unticked. A tutor can paste a brief with no student's work in it. Verify references looks each reference up in the publisher's record: verified, doubtful (shown as "check this") or not found, retractions flagged, and "could not check" never shown as "not found". Point the student to it rather than correcting the list yourself.
Theoretics QA: the student's own check
Theoretics QA, part of Max, checks a paper against its own instructions, so the student runs it on their own draft. They give it the instructions and upload the draft in their dashboard; each confirmed rule comes back met or not met with its sentence, and for each thing the instructions ask, a reader says whether the paper does it, quotes the passage as evidence and names what is missing. Formatting, citations and references are in the same report. Nothing is written, rewritten or paraphrased, and no grade is given.
It is the best preparation for a session we know of, and the policies above say why: its evidence is quotations from the student's draft, and it adds no words to it, the line UNC keeps. A chatbot asked to improve a draft rewrites it, which Edinburgh's guidance says an online proofreading tool must never do without acknowledgement. A student who arrives with the report has "how am I going" answered, so the session can go on "where to next". Max is $24 a month or $216 a year, free for 14 days (plans). It could not be run for this guide, and no result of it appears here.
For markers, see checking submissions against the assignment brief; for rubrics, checking a paper against the marking rubric; for every tool, EdCitation for instructors; to cover a whole programme, the Institution licence.
What must a tutor never do in a session?
A tutor must never write any part of the paper: no sentence, thesis, heading or reference. The easier lines to cross follow from it: typing in the student's document, even to demonstrate; correcting every error rather than explaining one; supplying the argument, a source or a fact; predicting a mark, which is the marker's judgement; and working on a take-home exam without permission, which UNC asks students to check with their instructor first.
Tools and declarations
Universities set rules for tools as well as people: Edinburgh's guidance lists reference lists among the things an online proofreading tool must not identify or correct without acknowledgement. So ask the student: what does your course say about the help and tools you have used, and have you declared them?
Quick questions
Can a writing tutor proofread my essay?
Usually not: no proofreading is the orthodox writing-centre position. UNC's Writing Center and Manchester Metropolitan University's tutors both say they will not proofread, and teach the student to find and fix errors instead.
What are feed up, feed back and feed forward?
Hattie and Timperley's three questions of effective feedback: where am I going (the goal), how am I going (progress towards it), and where to next (what to do). In a tutoring session, the brief and marking criteria are the goal.
Can a peer mentor give feedback on a friend's essay?
Usually, within the university's rules. Edinburgh's guidance counts a friend as a third party who may correct small slips but must never change the argument, structure, facts or references. Check your own university's policy first.
Can a tool prepare a tutoring session?
It can do the checking. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads the brief into rules, each beside its sentence, and a student with Max can run Theoretics QA on their own draft. Neither writes anything; the conversation stays with tutor and student.
References
- Boiko, K. (2018). Investigative essay [Assignment]. 21W.035 Science Writing and New Media: Science Writing for the Public, MIT OpenCourseWare. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21w-035-science-writing-and-new-media-science-writing-for-the-public-spring-2018/pages/assignments/investigative-essay/
- Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
- Liu, C., & Harwood, N. (2022). Understandings of the role of the one-to-one writing tutor in a U.K. university writing centre: Multiple perspectives. Written Communication, 39(2), 228–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/07410883211069057
- Manchester Metropolitan University. (n.d.). Writing feedback. Study Skills. https://www.mmu.ac.uk/student-life/course/study-skills/writing-feedback
- University of Edinburgh, Academic Services. (2024). Proofreading of student assessments [PDF]. https://edwebcontent.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/atoms/files/academicmisconductproofreadingguidance.pdf
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Writing Center. (n.d.-a). FAQs. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faqs/
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Writing Center. (n.d.-b). Policy. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/policy/
- Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., & Hattie, J. (2020). The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 3087. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03087