ABSTRACT
Editing is an increasingly common practice in institutions such as the European Commission, which employ large numbers of language professionals. This article aims to demonstrate the pedagogical value of including editing activities in advanced English language courses. It starts by distinguishing spoken English as a lingua franca used in international institutions from the written English required in the same institutions’ documents, which are expected to conform to norms embodied in reference works. It describes an introductory module to editing developed for Italian university students. In a series of tasks undertaken over three months, the students reflected on revisions made to specialized documents by expert editors, read extracts from reference works on good writing in English, were introduced to reference and specialized corpora, and attempted to edit a document themselves. The module raised awareness among students of the editing process, of how to use corpora for solving doubts and exploring language, and alerted them to the contradiction between English as a Lingua Franca (EFL) in its spoken form and the norms required in international institutions for documents written in English.
