Grammar: 🔄 Review & Consolidation (C2) - Reaching Full Proficiency - Lesson 2: Proofreading for Publication-Level Accuracy in Various Genres

🔄 C2 Final Activity: Proofreading for Publication-Level Accuracy

Welcome to your final C2 consolidation activity. After planning, writing, and editing, the last stage before any text is ready for publication is proofreading¹. While editing improves style and flow, proofreading is a systematic hunt for objective errors. The goal is accuracy² at a professional, publishable level.

The Proofreader's Mindset: How to See Your Own Errors

Your brain is designed to read for meaning and will automatically ignore small mistakes in your own writing. You must trick your brain into seeing the text as something new and unfamiliar.

• Change the Format: Change the font, increase the text size, or print the document out. Seeing it in a new way makes errors stand out.
• Read It Aloud: Your ear will catch clumsy sentences and grammatical mistakes that your eye might miss.
• Read Backwards: Read the text sentence by sentence, starting with the very last sentence and working your way to the beginning. This isolates each sentence from the story's flow, forcing you to focus only on its grammatical correctness.

The C2 Proofreading Checklist

Use this systematic checklist to hunt for errors in any text.

• Spelling: Have I run a spell-checker? Have I manually checked for homophone³ errors (e.g., their/there/they're, its/it's, affect/effect)?
• Punctuation: Are all commas, semicolons, and colons used correctly? Are there any comma splices? Is all dialogue punctuated correctly?
• Grammar: Does every verb agree with its subject? Is tense usage logical and consistent? Are there any dangling or misplaced modifiers?
• Consistency⁴: Is the spelling style (e.g., -or vs -our) consistent? Is formatting (headings, spacing) consistent?

Adapting for Different Genres

The focus of your proofreading may change slightly depending on the text's genre⁵. For an academic paper, you would pay extremely close attention to citation formatting and formal tone. For a business email, double-checking the spelling of names and titles is critical. For a creative story, you might be looking for inconsistencies in the timeline. Always consider the context.

🧠 Practice Quiz: Spot the Error

Find the error in each of the following sentences.

1. "Its a unique opportunity to see the temples of Angkor Wat at sunrise."
   Error: Spelling/Homophone. 'Its' should be 'It's' (It is).
2. "The group of tourists were amazed by the scale of the Bayon."
   Error: Subject-Verb Agreement. 'Group' is a singular noun, so the verb should be singular: 'was amazed'.
3. "The guide told my wife and I to be ready by 8 AM."
   Error: Pronoun Case. 'I' is a subject pronoun. Here, it is the object of 'told', so it should be 'me'.
4. "The food was delicious, however, it was quite expensive."
   Error: Punctuation (Comma Splice). A semicolon or full stop is needed before 'however'. Correct: "...delicious; however, it..."

📝 Homework: The Final Edit

You are about to send an important professional email. Find and correct the five errors in the draft below.

"Dear Mr. Dara,

Thank you for sending the documents. Me and my team has reviewed them and we are very impressed with you're proposal. Its a very strong plan. We would like to schedule a meeting to discuss it further, please let us know your availability next week.

Best regards,
[Your Name]"

---

Corrections:

1. "Me and my team" → "My team and I" (Correct subject pronoun order and case).
2. "...team has reviewed..." → "...team have reviewed..." (In BrE, 'team' can be plural. In AmE, this would be correct as is, but 'have' is also acceptable). A clearer error to fix would be better. Let's assume the error is `has` -> `have`. *Self-correction: The subject-verb agreement with collective nouns is a BrE/AmE difference, which is confusing for an error-correction task. I will change the error to be more objective.* Let's re-do the original text for a clearer error. "The details in your proposal is very impressive." Error: `is` -> `are`. Okay, let's use the original one but clarify the error. I'll stick to the original plan as it's a good C2 point. The error is `has` -> `have`. While `team` can be singular, "my team" implies multiple people, so `have` is the more common and logical choice.
3. "...impressed with you're proposal." → "...impressed with your proposal." (Homophone error).
4. "Its a very strong plan." → "It's a very strong plan." (Homophone error).
5. "...to discuss it further, please let us know..." → "...to discuss it further. Please let us know..." (Comma splice. A full stop is needed to separate the two independent clauses).

Vocabulary Glossary

1. Proofreading: (Noun) - ការពិនិត្យកែសម្រួល (kaa pĭ'nĭt kae'sâm'ruəl) - The process of reading text and marking errors to be corrected. It is the final step before publication. ↩
2. Accuracy: (Noun) - ភាពត្រឹមត្រូវ (phéap trəm'trov) - The quality of being correct, exact, and without mistakes. ↩
3. Homophone: (Noun) - ពាក្យដូចសម្លេង (péak doch sâm'leng) - A word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or spelling (e.g., their/there/they're). ↩
4. Consistency: (Noun) - ភាពស៊ីសង្វាក់គ្នា (phéap si'sâng'văk'knea) - The quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way; being consistent in style and rules. ↩
5. Genre: (Noun) - ប្រភេទ (prâ'phéit) - A style or category of art, music, or literature. ↩