Original	Revision
Although her husband had the attitude of reciprocity, it was she who cared for his mother. She did not argue that her husband should take this job, not her.	Although her husband had the attitude of reciprocity, it was she who cared for his mother. She did not argue that her husband should take on this job, not her.

The difference between to take a job and to take on a job emerged clearly from a concordance, an extract from which follows. Take a job (citations 1-8) occurs in contexts which state what sort of job it is, how much it pays, whether it is part-time or full-time, etc. In other words, it means to take employment:

   1) to pay off, she cannot now take a job paying less than pounds 12,000 a year. "I hav
   2) iver. He is now leaving to take a job in Brussels as a European commissioner. With 
   3) a kitchen assistant before taking a job as a pizza delivery driver 18 months ago. W
   4) x years. Three years ago I took a part-time job and have received my tax allowances
   5) eir boy to be a lawyer. He took a job with the Ministry of the Interior but spent h
   6) se neuroses.' At 16, Moore took a summer job working on the chassis line at GM but 
   7) er moving to New York, she took a modelling job and, while doing an ad for Olivetti
   8)  block any move for him to take another job in football." Little would see a return

   9) , Whitbread is strong. Why take on the job of scrapping excess capacity when this c
  10) ays be people unwilling to take on the stressful job-loads most Utopias depend on. 
  11)  A group of students could take on the job of compiling the electoral register ahea
  12)  teaching qualification to take on a demanding job from which you can be sacked wit
  13) r does not improve when he takes on the job of defending Boston's most corrupt publ
  14)  be pounds 200,000. Now he takes on an unpaid job for an organisation which many be
  15) He's fat, he's 53 and he's taking on a stress-loaded job. He may be leader but he c
  16) ivated plants, while women took on the job of grain preparation.' Women had t kneel

A point which will no doubt occur to some teachers (and students?) is that this seems to be a point of very minor linguistic detail. Would it not have been better for the consultant to insert the missing on in the matter of a second or two than to spend minutes obtaining and studying with the student a concordance of take in the context of job? My response to such an objection would be twofold:

1. To employ a fashionable distinction, what is important in the one-to-one consultations is the process of revision - the finding out, the testing of various possibilities, and not the product of revision - ie the maximum amount of 'corrected' text. There does, in fact, seem to be an inverse relationship between the amount of text revised and the week-by-week progress made by the student: it is difficult, if not impossible, for the average student to learn much from large quantities of corrected test.

2. Whether a linguistic point is - or is not - a matter of detail cannot be decided in absolute terms. Here, for example, the student's whole dissertation centres on the responsibilities (duties, burdens, etc.) that a carer takes on in looking after an elderly relative, and in that context the verb is far more than a peripheral detail.