Mentoring Guidelines
In order to avoid plagiarism, it is essential that you submit work that is 100% your own. It cannot be work that is a collaborative effort between you and your mentor. Therefore, the following guidelines must always be followed so that our mentors can help you in a constructive, ethical manner:
- The mentor will not edit, write, or revise your work for you -- the mentor may indicate where problems exist but will not rewrite or suggest specific wording of ideas.
- The mentor may help you to establish whether something is clear and/or makes sense again, the mentor may indicate where problems exist but will not rewrite or suggest specific wording of ideas.
- The mentor may indicate the kind and location of grammatical and/or mechanical errors in your work, but will not make actual corrections for you. The mentor will review the grammatical point with you so that you can make your own corrections with confidence.
- The mentor may point out incorrect wording or usage, but will not indicate what corrections to make or make the corrections for you. The mentor will work with you on areas of your vocabulary, verb tense, and sentence structure so that you can make your own corrections with confidence.
- The mentor will teach you skills you need to evaluate your own writing and argument strategies. The mentor will work with you so that you develop your own concrete strategies for developing strong thesis statements and persuasive evidence.
- The mentor will not make editorial corrections or do proofreading (i.e. he or she will not read your paper to find and correct all the errors for you). The tutor will, however, help you to do this yourself.
- Violation of these guidelines is contrary to the University policy on plagiarism and cheating. Plagiarism is a serious offence with serious penalties attached to it.
Our goal is to help you gain the necessary skills to become a confident, competent, and independent writer. To survive in the business world you must be able to communicate and write clearly -- you have to be able to identify and correct your own errors and/or weaknesses. Just as you should not become dependent on the Spell-Check and Grammar-Check of your computer, you should not rely solely on the services of any proofreader or editor.
The above guidelines are adapted from documents produced by the UBC Writing Centre and the Douglas College English Dept.
