FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

• Academic writing, proofreading, editing
• Dissertation writing, dissertation coaching, dissertation editing and proofreading
• Research planning and design (in social sciences and humanities
• IELTS, SAT, TOEFL, GRE, AP English Preparation
• Graduate/Undergraduate admissions essay writing and editing
• Graduate school applications
• Business writing/editing
• Literature review planning, organizing, editing
• Resume/Cover letter guidance & job tailoring
• Interview Coaching
• Proofreading of scientific papers

I am an English professor, which means I know what your teacher wants and expects from your writing. Many other companies simply proofread your essays thinking it is enough to get a good grade, but as an English teacher, I know that effective writing is more than having proper grammar and punctuation.

I will check your paper first for logical content, ideas, organization, and flow before we proofread to make sure that your writing meets all of the requirements for a high grade.

You will not only improve the quality of your paper, but you will learn from the experience. I don’t just “fix” your paper; I help you develop the writing skills you need to write well on your next writing assignment.

Research shows that students learn by writing, getting personal feedback, and then revising. However, in universities, professors usually don’t have time to give each student detailed feedback; generally, they just give a final grade.

I work with you one-on-one to help you develop the writing skills and confidence you need to succeed in your academic and professional life.

$50 to $65 per hour based on project length, type, and deadlines.

How often we meet depends on you. If you need periodic help to make constant progress on your writing project, we could meet once or twice a week for an hour or two. However, if you are “stuck” at a certain point of your project, we can work intensely as-needed for a few hours during the week until you overcome a particular writing issue.

If you have a project due and need immediate help, we can also have “emergency” meetings to get quick feedback or help solve an immediate problem.

I am available by phone, Google Hangout, Zoom web conferencing or Skype. We can also chat and interact via email. I can also record our Zoom session and share the video with you for future reference as you revise. 

Just like a fitness coach helps you build strength and flexibility, a writing coach helps you develop the writing skills and approaches necessary to be a successful writer.

As your writing coach, I can help you through all the stages of your writing process from brainstorming to drafting, organizing, revising, and editing.

Writing can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, so a writing coach can help you manage you time so that you make consitent progress toward completing your writing project.

In the “real” world, writing includes various processes of revision based on feedback from your professors, advisors, and journal editors, so as your writing coach, I can help you develop strategies for interacting with diverse audiences and advocating for your ideas—you do not always have to make all of the changes requested by your advisor or committee members. If you can explain the rationale for your ideas and writing choices, you can maintain the integrity of your work. At times, revision is about negotiation and adding clarity and support to your claims rather than relinquishing them.

I help students identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current writing process and develop strategies for improving that process and making it more efficient.

Some students may not yet have developed a functional writing process, so I guide them through the stages of planning, drafting and revising until they become independent writers and can implement those steps on their own.

The writing process is not always linear. Even though writing books break down the task of writing into simple stages of brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing, sometimes, you may draft, and then go back and have to outline to get a sense of what organization would work best as you revise. Feedback and one-one-one conversation can be extremely helpful when you are too much in “your own head” and don’t know how to best organize your ideas. Having an “outsider” look at your ideas from a different perspective can help you step away from your own paper and find the optimal approach to conveying your ideas to your audience.

A dissertation coach is someone who can help you with components of the dissertation writing project that may be beyond the scope of your advisor’s limited time. For example, if your advisor says that she has trouble understanding your ideas, or that your writing is not in line with conventions of scholarly, academic writing, I can help you improve your style and add clarity to your writing.

Another hurdle may be determining the scope of your literature review or narrowing your research questions down so that you can get approval for the project from your advisor. Thus, you can think of a dissertation coach as someone who fills in the gaps that your advisor may not want or have the time to do.

A coach can also help with the initial process of locating a dissertation topic at the stage before you find an advisor interested in working with you on that subject. To that end, a coach can help come up with research ideas, finding a conceptual or theoretical framework for your study, drafting a research proposal, developing and implementing a weekly writing plan, managing the dissertation committee, or, if you are publishing in scholarly articles, interpreting reviewers’ often conflicting advice, and more.

As your writing coach, I will not be completing your writing for you. You can consider me a personal tutor or guide who can teach you ways to write more efficiently and effectively. However, I will not be conducting research or writing for you.

Sometimes, novice writers accidentally plagiarize when using outside sources. To avoid this, when reading your drafts, I will make sure you are citing and paraphrasing correctly while also using proper citation formats.

Writer’s block often results from students feeling overwhelmed and confused by a writing assignment. Sometimes, they simply don’t know where to start. And sometimes, they are subconsciously weighted down by hear the negative feedback or bad grades they may have gotten for their writing in the past. At times, they may feel thatwhatever they write is “wrong” and “not what the teacher wants.”

If you work with me, I can help you overcome all of these fears and anxieties.

In the 21st century, which is considered the digital and information age, regardless of your profession, being a strong writer is more important than ever before. Whether you are applying to a new job, completing a master’s or dissertation thesis, or crafting important reports and emails at work, clear and concise writing skills are essential.

Being a good writer is the ability to choose the right genre, tone, style, content, and organization in response to a particular writing situation and audience.

You can get better at writing only through practice. As you work with a writing coach to complete projects and as the coach helps you overcome specific problems in your writing, and as you get periodic feedback and guidance, you will increasingly become a more confident and independent writer. With time, you will find your writer’s voice and you will be able to express your ideas clearly, concisely, and assuredly in diverse writing situations.

Soon, writer’s block will be a distant memory, because by working with a coach, you will have nothing to fear when it comes to starting a new writing project.

For interview coaching, I will start by asking you to provide a copy of the job description of the job that you are trying to get. If there isn’t a specific job yet, but you want to prepare in advance, then you can provide several job descriptions from employment ads from the field you are trying to join. In addition, I may ask you to provide 5 most commonly asked questions in your profession.

In our first interview coaching session, I will ask you 5-10 interview questions and evaluate you responses in terms of brevity, application to the job, word choice, tone, body language, and so on.

I will provide feedback and ask you to practice the answers based on my feedback. We can also record your sample answers and evaluate them together. Then, I will help you develop more appropriate answers and will give you time to practice your answers at home, using your notes.

Then, we will meet again to check your progress. We will practice the questions several times until your answers are precise, concise, and clear. We will also talk about strategies for answering unexpected questions. Thus, you will feel confident, prepared and perhaps even excited at the prospect of your next job interview.

Keep in mind that there is a big difference between interviewing in person, by phone, or Skype. Each of these situations present different challenges. In today’s global environment, the interviewer can also be someone from a culture that is different from your own. I can be of particular help to job applicants outside of the U.S or U.K. who may be interviewed by Western employees and may also need some guidance on interview etiquette, expectations, and best practices in Western and European countries.

There is a resources page where you’ll find a list of many publications on academic writing, literature reviews, and dissertations.

go to our resources page