Write & Improve and Grammarly to teach writing

 

Tools to develop and improve the skill of Writing

Writing is one of the four basic skills of English and one of the complex ones for learners and Hinkel, Leki & Carson (1997) said that is particularly challenging even for the more advanced learner because it is necessary to take into account several factors such as grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and organization. This skill is an essential part of language learning due to is a reflective activity that students develop on a specific topic and structure their ideas.  

In this way, writing is one of the ways to communicate with people, regardless of the context. Unlike speaking, which is spontaneous, writing requires more time to think, which allows them more opportunity for language processing that is thinking about language. In addition, writing is a gradual process, which goes from less to more. Thus, teachers should work on this skill according to the level of their students to engage them with activities which are easy and enjoyable to take part in, so that writing activities not only become a normal part of classroom life but also present opportunities for students to achieve almost instant success. 

Thanks to the development of technology, different apps, and digital tools have been created to practice writing with activities of different levels. They suggest corrections to improve style, grammar, coherence, and organization, among other things. 

Write & improve

This digital tool is online and free. It belongs to Cambridge, and students and teachers can use it. The options it offers for teachers are that they can create online exercise books or send writing tasks to students. In this way, they can practice in the classroom or at home. On the other hand, students from 7th to 12th grade can use it because the levels are beginner, intermediate, and advanced. There is also an option about business, and another called Just for fun. There is a variety of writing exercises such as stories, emails, articles, reviews, and proposals. It provides feedback to the person who uses it. To work with this tool, you need to register with an email, and you just have to choose a task, write, and minutes later, the relevant corrections and comments will appear to understand the mistakes. In addition, it shows how to improve grammar and vocabulary. However, the limitations of this tool are that with each writing that the person does, it tells him/ her what level he/she is at, so sometimes it does not reflect that level. Another limitation is that the feedback is incomplete and will not compare to a real teacher's.

Grammarly

It is a free writing app that makes sure that everything you type is easy to read and mistake-free. This tool can spell check and even detect words used in the wrong context. It also can even fix commonly confused words such as lose/loose, practise/practice, etc. In addition, it has a good grammar checking system that can fix hundreds of grammatical errors and gives very good explanations as to why your structures are wrong. This app can be used by students from 7th to 12th grade in order to practice, develop and improve their writing in the classroom or at home. To work with Grammarly, you have to register with the mail. Once you have logged in, start to write. The number in the red circle shows the number of errors you have. If you click on that circle, it will take you to a new screen where you can see the errors and their recommended corrections. This tool gives you suggested corrections for each of the errors you make and a detailed description of the correct answer. In addition, by adding Grammarly to Chrome, all the spelling and grammar will be checked whenever you use Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you write on the internet. However, one of the limitations is that to ensure it corrects all the mistakes, the person will have to buy the premium version, and there is no mobile version to use on the phone or tablet.

References: 

https://writeandimprove.com 

https://app.grammarly.com