Help! My Students Can't Write and I Can't Edit: An Analysis of Editing Training for Wilmington University Adjunct Professors to Address Inadequacies in Student Writing

This executive position paper proposes recommendations for the development of editing workshops and editing training for adjunct faculty of Wilmington University. An editing workshop was developed and taught to two groups of adjunct instructors at Wilmington University. Surveys distributed to the adjuncts after the workshops provide relevant data regarding their interest in learning more about editing, as well as their level of concern for the poor writing skills of many of their students. Surveys also reveal if adjuncts would value additional editing training, and whether they feel their students' deficient writing skills reflect poorly on the University.;Descriptive statistics were used to consider the adjunct instructors' confidence in editing before and after the workshop, and to examine if the teachers maintained their confidence once time had passed. Comparisons were made to determine relationships between colleges in which the adjuncts taught, the numbers of narrative papers they assigned, and to discern their level of concern for students' writing skills.;Recommendations are based on a goal to improve student writing. This document aims to prove that adjunct instructors at Wilmington University should consider strongly the importance of editing student papers for grammar as well as content. Data from Wilmington University's Student Success Center indicates a growing trend of students who are interested in grammar tutoring.;This document contains an action plan, located in Appendix A. The plan offers instructions on teaching the editing workshop developed by the author. The two surveys employed for this research appear in Appendix B.