Speaker: Steven Sheward
Please tell us your name, where you're from and a bit about your background
Steven Sheward: Hi, my name is Steve and I live on the south coast of England. A little bit about my background: I worked for many years in I.T. and more recently I was a teacher of English as a second language.
What made you originally start thinking about a proofreading course or a career in freelancing?
Steven Sheward: I decided that I wanted to retire from teaching, but I didn't want to give up work completely. I was looking for something that would offer flexibility, enable me to work from home. Because I was interested in English, proofreading seemed like a good option, and that's when I discovered the Becoming A Proofreader course.
What was your overall experience with our Becoming A Proofreader course? What did you like in particular?
Steven Sheward: I really enjoyed the course. I love studying English, so it was wonderful to do that. The course is very well designed, gives you experience, in proofreading lots of different types of material. And what was particularly good about it was that you get lots of feedback. At the end of each lesson there's a quiz and you get the results of that straight away. So it's instant feedback. And at the end of each module there's a larger assignment. Again, once you've completed that, you get your feedback straight away so you can see if there's anything that you need to concentrate on, anything that you haven't understood straight away, and correct that, put that right. Which is wonderful.
What was your experience with our guaranteed work offer with Proofed? How has the course helped you reach your goals?
Steven Sheward: After graduating, I was offered work with Proofed, and that's been a great experience. At times, challenging because I was having to deal with sometimes quite large documents. But that challenge has actually been really good because by meeting that challenge, I've been able to increase my confidence. And the other good thing about Proofed is that there are so many resources available to you. If there's anything that you're not clear about, there'll be something there to help you or somebody to help you because you can ask questions of other people, and it's a very supportive environment. And there's plenty of work available for me. There's been no shortage of work. So I've been able to do exactly what I wanted, which was work as much or as little as I choose. So yeah, all around a great experience.
What would you say to someone thinking about taking the course?
Steven Sheward: For somebody who's thinking about taking the course, I would say go for it, do it. It's a really, really well-designed course and it's very enjoyable. And it can lead to lots of work in the future as it has done for me. So yes, I recommend it.
