Same academic support field as danceswithcloud – we’re the ‘some type of writing support’ you mention above. I also get frustrated with the focus on the surface features of writing at the expense of learning – unless your degree is in MFL (as mine was) – grammar is not the primary objective of the assessment! it’s really misleading often too – the only word some academic staff seem to have in their feedback arsenal is ‘grammar’ when very often it’s no such thing, or certainly not the main issue. And half the time it’s not accuracy but personal taste – language evolves and diversifies. I don’t proofread or teach grammar either – I talk to students about the kind of identity they may need to project or create through text for their reader, in order to come across as persuasive in this context. Grammatical accuracy is a small part of this, but there are far more important aspects to that textual, academic writerly identity. I certainly would be horrified at attempts to rewrite a student’s work – that’s ‘colonising’ as you say their identity – how is that supposed to help them become independent learners with their own distinctive voice and ideas?

One concern I have is that neither we learning developers, nor EAP tutors I’ve spoken to, see their remit as teaching grammar ie fluency, but something more profound. But universities think that’s what we do but that’s not the problem we’re solving. But who is? Can it even be addressed at university level? I say this as someone who studied MFL and is aware of the enormity of the task of becoming fluent in a second language, even for those of us for whom it was their primary interest!