Language Schools Editing and Proofreading Services

Language schools sell a level. A student pays for a course described as B2, arrives, and discovers the class contains people who cannot follow the teacher and people who are bored — because the school placed them on a test that measured grammar, and the level they were sold describes what someone can actually do. Levels are the entire currency of this sector, used for placement, for marketing, for certificates and for employers and universities who accept them, and they are applied with startling looseness.

We edit what language schools and providers produce — course descriptions and level statements, placement test material and its guidance, level descriptors and can-do statements for students, progress reports and end-of-course feedback, certificates and statements of attainment, examination preparation course material, teacher guidance and lesson material, accreditation and inspection documentation, student handbooks and welfare information, homestay and accommodation material, agent and partner briefing packs, marketing and prospectus copy including outcome claims, and safeguarding material for under-18 provision. Our editors work with material that will be read by students working in their second or third language.

Level claims are where this sector should be most careful and generally is not. A course sold as B2 should mean the student can do what B2 describes at the end of it, and a placement into B2 should mean they can do it at the start — and schools routinely use one framework for marketing, another for placement, and a third for the certificate, none of them stated. We rewrite level material so every level statement names the framework and is expressed in can-do terms the student can check against themselves, since a learner who reads that they will be able to follow a meeting in which several colleagues disagree knows whether that is where they are; so the placement test's coverage is disclosed, because a test of grammar and reading placing students into a speaking course is placing on the wrong evidence; so progress is reported against the same descriptors used at placement rather than as a percentage; and so any certificate says what was assessed and what was not, because a certificate implying a level that was never tested is the document that eventually reaches an employer.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including student records and material before publication. We are editors rather than language teaching or assessment specialists, and we offer no view on placement, level assessment, examination preparation or accreditation requirements. What we can do is make level claims consistent and student-facing material readable by learners at the level it addresses.