A great part of success in academia comes from the way the author or scholar approaches the writing process. Whether you want to supercharge your reading, research, and study skills, or your academic writing and speaking skills, we can help. Call it "tutoring" if you like, but that makes it sound more like boring instruction. Our coaching is more like athletic coaching, martial-arts coaching, life coaching, dissertation coaching; combining encouragement and exhortation with knowledge and expertise, Wordsmith coaches help you through the tough times, draw out the best from you, and give you skills and understanding that your professor takes for granted (or doesn't have time to impart).
Academic coaching can help you:
- Tackle that writing assignment with a coach to walk you through (project-oriented coaching)
- Read without fear, confident that you will comprehend the most difficult texts (analytical reaching coaching)
- Improve your writing skills with individual instruction (process-oriented tutoring)
- Finish your required reading faster than you thought possible (assessment reading training)
- Hone your logic and case-building abilities, making your writing cogent and compelling
- Discover the martial art of scholarship, bringing strength, wisdom, and grace to your studies
Academic coaching begins with a free initial consultation. Once we understand you and the unique challenges you face, we customize a coaching strategy that will fit both your needs and your budget. We match you with a coach who will carry out that strategy together with you, adapting it as your situation changes. And it will. Your approach to academic reading, academic writing, and your fundamental understanding of education will change, deepen, strengthen, mature... if you stick to your training in the martial art of scholarship.
PRESS Writers Group: for academic writers too!
Need some accountability to focus your full, fierce attention on that material you need to study, or that paper you need to write? Join us for a writing sprint (or a study sprint, or a brainstorming sprint, whatever you need it to be) through one of our PRESS writers' groups! Let us help you press toward your goals, gain a new awareness of your personal productivity patterns, and discover productivity hacks that work for you. We will work and PRESS together!
Check out our WRITERS' GROUPS page for more details or join below!
Academic Editing:
Now that you've begun your training in the martial arts of scholarship and finally finished that difficult writing task, we also offer academic editing. We usually incorporate this into our coaching, but if all you need is the editing itself, we can restrain ourselves from seizing those teachable moments!
Here are several different kinds of academic editing we offer:
"Developmental" Academic Editing/Coaching
If you have a finished draft: We give you an overall critique and section-by-section feedback concerning assignment objectives, academic writing style, structure, logical flow, rhetorical impact, and more. This focuses on the coherence and strength of the whole. You’ll see more comments than corrections.
If you need to finish a draft: We walk you through the Pre-Writing and Drafting process, giving you a few of our "Tips and Tricks to get an 'A'." Using the Socratic method, we help you think clearly and connectedly about your topic, developing a strong outline and a helpful list of tasks and prompts so that you can finish that assignment well.
$75/hr
Academic Copyediting
If your draft is complete and you are confident that the content and arrangement are strong, this is the appropriate choice for you. We focus less on the overall structure and more on paragraphs, sentences, and word choice. We correct grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation, and APA style conventions, but also look for ways to refine your argument, style, and expression. You’ll see lots of corrections but some comments too, including specific suggestions for revisions if necessary.
$0.04 - $0.06 / word
Academic Proofreading
Focuses on punctuation, spacing, APA or MLA style and formatting, and combing out every last error. No margin comments unless clarification is needed. If we believe your work needs a higher level of editing, we will tell you, and tell you why... but if you have specifically asked for "proofreading," we will not do any higher-level editing without your permission.
$0.04 / word
Academic Formatting
Depending on your course of study and the school you attend (or the journal or publisher you're submitting to), your work may need to be formatted according to a specific style guide like APA, MLA, AP, Chicago/Turabian, or another less-common one. We can do this for you too. If you have specifically asked for "formatting," we will not pay any attention to the content of your work. If we notice you need any kind of editing (developmental, copyediting, or proofreading), we will point that out to you, but we will not do any of that without your permission.
$0.04 / word
