In this day and age of globalization, English skill is one of the must-have ones to hold an edge over the rest. For an aspiring writer or a journalist, the English medium offers a diverse and larger audience. So naturally, the importance is immense. But the simple knowledge of the language and grammar isn’t enough to create a compelling piece. Proper editing and proofreading can make good writing into great writing. With that said, here are some top rated free online courses for learning English editing and proofreading to get started on the journey.
Why Should You Learn English Editing and Proofreading?
English is the most spoken second language in the world and the de-facto international mode of communication. With a basic knowledge of English, anyone can go about writing stuff. Of course, there is a huge difference between just writing and telling a story. Editing helps to make any writing clear and concise and adds or deletes certain parts of a complete piece. There are different types of editing and each follows a set of rules. Learning the process helps to identify what to implement where. Proofreading comes along with editing because let’s be honest, who wants silly grammatical or spelling mistakes in their writing?
The prospect of English writing is immense in the context of Bangladesh. From English dailies, blogs, and online news agencies to freelance copywriting gigs, the opportunities are endless. Most of these jobs are also home-based with a handsome payout. In short, it’s a great career opportunity for anyone into writing. Combine the interest with necessary editing and proofreading skills and one can be a master of words in no time.
Top 8 Free Online Courses to Learn English Editing and Proofreading
Online Proofreading Classes – Skillshare
Proofreading makes up the basics of editing. This foundation course on proofreading is offered by Skillshare for beginners. This is a self-paced course that mainly follows the very basics of the proofreading process, identification, replacement, and contextual compatibility. The free course will take the learner from a beginner to an intermediate level.
The course duration is 1 month but since this is a self-paced learning opportunity, learners can go about it at their own discretion.
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Writing for Young Readers – Coursera
This is another beginner-level editing and proofreading course offered by Coursera. The course has been designed in association with Commonwealth Education Trust for aspiring writers. The course focuses on editing and proofreading for storytelling.
This self-paced learning will take the learners through cultural boundaries, narrative style, writing art form, and self-editing. The learning outcome from here can be implemented in investigative writing as well. It will take about 13 hours to complete the course.
English Writing Skills – Alison
The English writing course from Alison focuses on the basics of sentence structuring for cohesive storytelling. The course itself doesn’t focus on a specific stream. Rather it aims to educate the learners on different narrative and writing styles and where to apply them.
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The course also focuses on audience management. It will entail different audience identification and demographic and learning to change the narrative style accordingly. This is a self-paced course that usually takes around 12 hours to complete.
Online English Proofreading Courses
Proofreading (Representational Image: Collected)
Writing and Editing: Structure and Organization – Coursera
This writing and editing course is fulfilled by the University of Michigan. It is part of their good with words series of writing courses. This specific course focuses on content structuring and proofreading. The course is heavy on text-based resources which will come in handy for the learners even after they have completed the modules.
But perhaps the best thing is the access to the University of Michigan’s digital library which houses some brilliant journal references for a deeper editorial understanding. The self-paced course usually takes around 4 weeks to complete.
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Learn English – British Council
This isn’t a specified editing or proofreading course per se. Rather it focuses on the writing aspect as a whole. The British Council has a self-study program that specializes in different writing levels starting from A1, A2, B1, B2, and C.
Each of the writing modules will also come with its own set of editing learning as well as proper sentence structuring which greatly helps to get the basics of Proofreading. Each module will take around a week to complete.
Proofreading 101 – Edit republic
Most of the proofreading courses come in a bundle or as part of editing courses. But this specific course from edit republic focuses on the nitty-gritty basics of proofreading itself. The course starts with the basics of which skills to develop to get started on proofreading as a career.
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After that, the topics dive into the details of intensive text review and applicable techniques to get the best possible result from every piece. This is a self-paced course and learners can complete the module at their own discretion.
Academic Editing in English – Cactus University
Beyond blogs, news and stories, there is another distinct type of English editing stream called academic writing. While it’s not much different from its other counterparts, the editing requires extra care as the sentence structure differs a lot.
This course aims to make the learner’s industry leaders and academic editors with equal importance in proofreading. It also has different tutorials on developing a unique style and polishing it to perfection. The course is a self-paced one without any form of the time limit.
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Editing and Proofreading Made Simple – LinkedIn Learning
This comprehensive proofreading course isn’t exactly free on LinkedIn Learning. But users can set up a free month trial account and access the module. The course itself is divided into three parts. The first one focuses on video lessons to understand the basics.
The second part focuses on examples and the third one delves deep into the mistakes to be avoided. There are also quizzes to test the learning outcomes as well. This is also a self-paced course.
Final Words
As an international language, almost everyone has some form of command over English. But the ability to write sentences doesn’t always make it a compelling piece. Let alone the application errors that come with it. However, taking a foundation course on English editing and proofreading will help to get a proper hang of English writing. Not to mention the immense career options as well.
Source: United News of Bangladesh