L2 student writers in UK universities often seek the services of a 'proofreader' before submitting work for assessment, and the proliferation of freelance proofreaders and online proofreading agencies has led to debates about the ethics of the proofreading of student writing in publications such as "Times Higher Education". This study…

This seminar took place on 19 April, 2013 at the Centre for Language and Communication, Faculty of Language and Education Studies, The Open University. The seminar was coordinated by Janet Maybin and Theresa Lillis and there were 28 participants, including four postgraduate students, from universities in Britain, Belgium and South Africa.

Twenty-two graduate students in education at a British university read, answered written questions, and then discussed four text extracts from different genres (literary, theoretical, research, and statistical). Results of this study and a follow-up survey of 39 similar students suggested that text genre is a major factor in perceived difficulty…