Learning from your proofreading
Proofreading not only helps to improve the quality of a written text, but can also teach you about the way you write, make mistakes and structure your ideas. Comments from proofreaders can assist you to reflect about your writing on a meta-level and to see repeating patterns of errors. Most students take their proofreaders comments as suggestions as they do not necessarily accept all of them and ideally they should discuss and understand the changes their proofreaders suggested to them, so that they can learn from them in the future.
I went to a session with the Royal Literary Fellow at Goldsmiths once. They were very good because they did not just take the text and told me to come back in two hours to pick up the corrected version .... Instead we sat down together and talked about why I have chosen particular words in order to see if they are justified in the text or should be replaced. For instance, I usually use the word 'betwixt' ... and the Royal Literary Fellow could not understand why I would not use 'between'. He told me where the word 'betwixt' is most commonly used and why it is not appropriate in my context.
PhD student in Media and Communications from Kroatia