http://discuss.cle.ust.hk/mediawiki/index.php?title=Writing_Enhancement_Tools
Contents
Introduction
English writing enhancement tools refer to those for writing
enhancement purposes which are programs used to provide proofreading,
polish writing for pupils and make some part of education more effective
and efficient. It covers many categories which are including lexical
resources, grammar check, writing polish, writing format tools, etc.
English writing enhancement tools serve as tools both for native
speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS).
Background Theory
"Writing across the Curriculum"
This is an influential approach to teaching writing within the
disciplines. Students' literacy problems become most obvious in their
writing (Wingate,2018). As an important part of students' academic
literacy, writing instruction within the discipline is of great
importance for institutions, teachers and students. Like the Academic
Word List, it provides 570-word families which aims at academic purpose
could serve as a role for teachers and students in academic writing.
Like the writing polish tools, currently, numerous tools could be used
in the discipline's perspective. Aiming at enhancing and polishing
writing, online writing enhancement tools are of utmost benefit in the
movement of "Writing Across the Curriculum".
The SAMR Model
As a way for teachers to evaluate how their cooperating with
technology into their instructional practice and evaluate how technology
integrating in the classroom, the SAMR model, proposed by Puentedura
(2010, 2013), is stratified into four levels, including Substitution,
Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. The SAMR model could serve
as a role of evaluating the use of technology, designing tasks
(targeting high order thinking skills), engaging students in rich
learning experiences and impact students' achievements. Writing
enhancement tools in the SAMR model could be illustrated with
augmentation tool, which could enhance productivity via the tool of
spell checking/ grammar checking; modification tool, which could aid
creative writing via feedback and enhancement suggestions; redefinition
tool, which would be of great benefits for students' creation, critical
thinking, collaboration and communication.
Error Analysis (EA)
The fact that not all errors are explicable by Contrastive Analysis
(CA) resulted in a disillusionment with contrastive analysis. Gradually
CA was replaced by the error analysis movement; a major claim is that
many errors made by L2 learners were caused by factors other than L1
interference.
(1) Error vs. Mistake: In the literature on error analysis,
errors and mistakes are offer differentiated (Lyster & Ranta, 1997).
Errors usually result from the leaners' lack of knowledge, which
represents a lack of competence. In other words, learners do not know
the right form or are unable to use language correctly. However,
mistakes often occur when learners fail to perform their competence. In
other words, the learner has already learned the knowledge or skill but
simply cannot function correctly due to lack of attention or other
factors.
(2) Different types of errors: interlingual errors and
intra-lingual errors; omissions, additions, double markings,
mis-formations and mis-orderings.
(3) The procedure of error analysis: Recognition -- Description
-- Explanation
Via various types of feedback and error analysis, writing enhancement
tools are regarded as tools for enhancing students' academic writing.
Besides, as the study of Yilmaz (2016) indicated that feedback exposure
condition exerts influence on the extent to which learners benefit from
feedback.
Input and Language Learning
Comprehensible input: According to Krashen's input hypothesis (1985),
learners acquire language as a result of comprehending input addressed
to them. Krashen brought forward the concept of the "i+1 principle".
Input should neither be so far beyond their ability that they are
overwhelmed, nor so close to their current stage that they are not
challenged at all.
Input in SLA: The roles of frequency, form and function (Ellis,
2009): The investigations reported broadly adopt functional linguistic,
cognitive-linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-linguistic and
constructionist perspectives. Based on input frequency, input form and
the function of input, input matters are regarded useful for L2
learners.
Situated Learning
Learning is situated in the activity in which it takes place.
Learning is doing. Meaningful learning will only take place if it is
embedded in the social and physical context within which it will be
used. Knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity,
context, and culture in which it is developed and used. Therefore,
learning methods that are embedded in authentic situations are not
merely useful; they are essential (Brown et al 1989)
Intelligent CALL
Informative and error-specific feedback, instructional guidance and
scaffolding. Writing enhancement and polish tools could be seen as good
examples for intelligent CALL.
Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL)
Considering the roles in TELL(Walker & White, 2013), it could be
divided into role as a tutor, role as a tutee, role as a tool and role
as a medium. As for the role as a tutor, it emphasize the language input
through technology. Writing enhancement tools like corpus, lexical
resources tools and polish writing tools can provide various kinds of
language input through technology. Through trials and errors, writing
enhancement tools enable learners to learn and acquire new knowledge in
the process of learning.
Online Writing Enhancement Tools for ESL Learning
Corpus
Corpus of Contemporary America English (COCA)
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is currently the
largest free English corpus. It consists of texts containing 520 million
words. These texts are composed of five different types of spoken
language, novels, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic articles.
Stylistic composition. From 1990 to 2015, the corpus expanded at an
annual rate of 20 million words to ensure the timeliness of the corpus
content. Therefore, the American contemporary English corpus is
considered to be the most suitable English corpus for observing the
current development of American English.
Compared with traditional dictionaries, COCA has the following advantages:
(1) The text of the corpus is relatively real-time. Words such as
life satisfaction and social media are not included in many traditional
dictionaries, but can be found in the corpus.
(2) The corpus can provide word frequency information of a word,
which helps us understand the frequency of occurrence of the word in
practical applications and helps to achieve accurate word use.
(3) The corpus can also provide functions such as fuzzy search and word collocation.
Link: COCA
The British National Corpus (BNC)
The British National Corpus (BNC)
The British National Corpus is currently the largest corpus that can
be used directly on the Internet. It is the British Oxford Press,
Longman Publishing Company, Chambers-Hallop Publishing Company, Oxford
University Computer Service Center, Lancaster English Computer Center
and A large-scale corpus jointly developed and established by the
British Library was completed in 1994.
The British National Corpus is a sample of wide-ranging written and
spoken languages. It contains 100 million words of electronic resources
to present British English since the late 20th century, involving spoken
and written English. The corpus of written and spoken languages
coexists, with a word volume of more than 100 million, and 4124 articles
representing a wide range of modern British English texts. Among them,
written language accounts for 90%, and spoken language accounts for 10%.
Link: the British National Corpus
WebCorp
WebCorp is a suite of tools which allows access to the World Wide Web
as a corpus - a large collection of texts from which facts about the
language can be extracted. WebCorp was created and is operated and
maintained by the Research and Development Unit for English Studies
(RDUES) in the School of English at Birmingham City University.
Link: WebCorp
Lexical Resources
The Academic Word List (AWL)
The Academic Word List is a useful English resource which serves as a
role of English for Academic Purposes for lectures and students. It
was developed and evaluated by Averil Coxhead (2000, 2011) from School
of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand. The list contains 570 word families which does
not include words that are in the most frequent 2000 words of English. A
written corpus of academic English was developed for the purpose of
finding out which words occurred in a wide range of academic texts from a
variety of subject areas. The Academic Corpus contained approximately
3,500,000 running words. It was divided into four faculty sections:
Arts, Commerce, Law and Science. Each of these faculty sections
contained approximately 875,000 running words. Each faculty section was
divided into seven subject areas of approximately 125,000 running words.
The headwords of the Academic Word List (AWL) are the stem form of the
words. The number after each headword is the sublist the word family is
in. The sublists have the word families of the AWL with the most
frequently used member of the family in italics. The word list has been
divided into sublists based on the frequency of occurrence of the words
in the Academic Corpus. The words in Sublist 1 occur more frequently in
the corpus than the other words in the list. Sublist 2 occurs with the
next highest frequency.
Link: Website of the AWL
The Free Dictionary
Applicable people: all English learners
This dictionary integrates the definitions of mainstream
dictionaries, and you can find more complete definitions and usage
without switching the dictionary. The dictionary also has functions of
querying synonyms, antonyms, medical dictionary, legal dictionary,
financial dictionary and so on. Meanwhile, this dictionary has a daily
column, which could be used as a learning tool for all English learners.
At present, the dictionary can be downloaded in the Apple store, or it
can be searched directly on the web version.
Link: Website of the Free Dictionary
Phrase Bank
This website is created by Dr. John Morley of the University of
Manchester. Based on the concept of "speech" proposed by John Swales,
the website provides a wealth of academic writing phrases and sentence
patterns from five parts: Introducing work, referring to sources,
describing methods, discussing findings and writing conclusions. All
phrases and sentence patterns are derived from academic papers of native
English speakers, which can be used by teachers, students and
researchers for academic writing.
Example sentences from the webpage:
Introducing questions, problems and limitations: theory or argument
•The main weakness with this theory is that …
•The key problem with this explanation is that …
•However, this theory does not fully explain why …
Link: Phrasebank.manchester
Thesaurus
Thesaurus is a dictionary that lists synonyms and antonyms for each
word. English includes too many words, and each meaning has many
synonyms. Sometimes in order to avoid repetition, or find more accurate
expression, Thesaurus is needed. For example, the simplest word is "see"
when expressing the meaning of perceiving with eyes. Taping the word
"see" in Thesaurus, the following words are accessible, like hold,
descry, discern, distinguish, espy, eye, look (at), note, notice,
observe, perceive, regard, remark, sight, spy, view, witness. As another
example, the word "very" is used in an article about four times.
Avoiding too many repetitions, Thesaurus would illustrate other words
for replacing, like extremely, incredibly, awfully, exceptionally,
exceedingly, especially, dreadfully, extraordinarily, enormously,
fantastically, vastly. Considering non-native speakers' vocabulary is
relatively limited, using Thesaurus as a tool would enrich the lexical
resources of the article. Later, it was found that many native speakers
are also used in this way since there are too many synonyms in English
and they also need the help of dictionary.
Link: Thesaurus
Linggle
Linggle could search the most correct English expression in different
contexts, which helps to analyze more accurate English writing
suggestions. In addition, it could also guess short sentences and
sentences based on part of speech, and accurately analyze how to write
complete English sentences.
Major functions of Linggle would be listed below:
•Writing Ahead
Typing a few words and then a couple of underscores _ . It allows you to find recurring phrases following the words.
•Checking Whether a Word Is Needed
A question mark ? followed by a word (e.g., to) allows you to check whether the word is needed in a phrase.
•Deciding on Alternative Phrases
Linggle not in the/a position to and you will get the frequency
ratios of not in the position to (4%) and not in a position to (94%).
Phrases with a high frequency count are usually preferred.
•Finding Collocations
Linggle's unique and very best feature is that keywords can be
combined with any part of speech to create a search query for finding
collocations.
•Precise Collocation Queries
Linggle uses a simple strategy to handle queries that involve parts of speech.
Link: Linggle
Urban Dictionary
Applicable people: all English learners
Commonly used slang and Internet terms can be found in this
dictionary for usage and interpretation, which is a function not
available in other dictionaries. The homepage of this dictionary will
set up a daily word item column, which will introduce a new vocabulary
with pictures and example sentences everyday. For the most commonly used
word explanations, it will be placed in the top definition column, and
many unused or even unused usages which cannot be searched in other
dictionaries would be included in this dictionary. In addition, the
example sentences for word collocation are more life-oriented in this
dictionary. This dictionary is suitable for the collection of European
and American youth language, young man's mantra, slang colloquialism,
internet language, song and film and television language, etc.
Link: Urban Dictionary
JustTheWord
JustTheWord, a word query website, could be quickly queried the
common collocation usage of a word, which is easy to operate. After the
query is completed, the query result will be automatically returned.
Link: JustTheWord
The biggest feature of the word query website Textranch is that it
has two search boxes. It could be entered two different words, phrases
or sentences in these two search boxes to query which one is used most
frequently.
Link: Textranch
Netspeak
Netspeak is a tool that provides free online translation of words,
phrases and sentences. It can search and compare various English
vocabulary, short sentences, grammar, word interpretation and other
content online, and calculate the change of this term. In addition,
Netspeak could also analyze the use frequency and situation, which is
similar to "Linggle". After landing on Netspeak, the official example is
to use "* #" to get synonyms, the effect obtained with "#" is more
biased towards the replacement of synonyms of single words, and the
result obtained with "*" is biased towards short sentences / phrases.
Link: Netspeak
OneLook Reverse Dictionary
Most people may have encountered such a situation that want to
express a certain meaning, but can not remember which specific words
should be used to describe. Or just know a common word but don't
understand how to express it in more authentic English. OneLook Reverse
Dictionary can help you solve this problem. As long as you search for
the meaning you want to express in the search box, the software will
give you a series of related words and phrases. For example, if you want
to express that you are going to have a vacation, and want to travel
"urge to travel" very much, the software gives wanderlust, itchy feet,
and so on.
Link: Onelook
Polishing Tools
Count Wordsworth
After entering the article on the page, the website can count the
number of words and the number of sentences, and also count the
frequency of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions,
conjunctions, articles, etc. used in articles. Corresponding statistics
will be made. This is a useful statistical tool for both students and
teachers.
Grammarly
It is an online free proofreading + plagiarism inspection tool which could help you check several types of errors.
•Grammar and punctuation: It can detect grammatical and
punctuation errors-from basic to advanced. It also provides real-time
advice and guidance on how to correct these errors.
•Spell Check: It is also a powerful spell checking tool that can
guarantee your writing without errors. It is also a powerful spell
checking tool.
•Plagiarism check: Grammarly can detect plagiarism by comparing your writing to billions of web pages on the web.
•Writing style: It can also help you self-edit your work by
providing real-time insights about your readability score, sentence
length, etc. This is very useful for adjusting specific types of writing
styles for specific audiences.
Who is suitable for Grammarly?
Grammarly is very useful for people whose native language is
English and those who do not often write in English. People using
Grammarly include:
•Blog: Content marketers and writers
•Author: Any business professional who wants to draft accurate reports,
presentations, emails or social media posts.
•Students: For new writers and professional writers, this grammar
checker can serve as another line of defense, even if they are native
English speakers.
Link: Grammarly
SlickWrite
Slick Write is a grammar checking tool that can be used without
registration. This tool does not check spelling or grammatical errors,
but analyzes the style of the sentence and proposes such as "too many
adverbs used in the full text", "too many sentence heads used the same
word The" and "the sentence used "Too many prepositional phrases" and
other suggestions.
Link: SlickWrite
StyleWriter
This software can be used with embedded words, the main function is
to check spelling, grammar and other errors, polish the article. There
will be tips about grammar choices to make the expression of the article
more authentic. The three main indicators of Style's article retouching
are: bog index, ave statement, and passive index.
Among them, Bog index stands for the "pre-determinability" of the
article, which is defined as Bog Index = sentence Bog + word Bog-Pep,
and sentence-bog is determined by sentence length, which is equal to the
square of the average sentence length divided by the maximum sentence
length. Word-bog is about words, such as difficult words, big words,
special words, etc., including passive voice. Pep is a very interesting
concept, such as good arguments and questions, interesting expressions,
etc. The Bog index includes according to the standards of Style-writer,
good articles should be short and succinct sentences, clean and neat
words, and use as few passive voices as possible. Conversely, if the
sentence is long, the words are biased, and there are many passive
voices, the Bog index can be used, and the lower the article level, the
bog of good articles defined on this website should be below 20.
Link: StyleWriter
Nounplus
NounPlus is an online English grammar detection and correction tool
that can be used for grammar problems in English. Nounplus tool's
grammar algorithm mainly focuses on grammar and syntax, and has more
than 1,000 commonly used grammar error screening mechanisms. In
addition, you can also install mobile applications to use, providing
Android and iOS mobile applications.
Link: Nounplus
Ginger
This tool can check grammar and spelling errors in Microsoft word,
PowerPoint, Outlook, Gmail and web pages. Ginger's sentence Re-phraser
can help you present your original writing in an authentic way;
text-to-speech can also help you learn English best. After entering the
text, you can choose English or American, male or female, absolutely
absolutely pure and authentic; The translation function can translate
your English thesis into authentic French, Greek and so on. Therefore,
Ginger is only a grammar, pinyin proofing software, or English writing
software, translation software, spoken language learning software, a
universal software to improve English.
1Checker
1checker is an English automatic checking and correction service
tool. In addition to providing English writing skills to correct
grammatical errors and automatic draft correction, it also has a
specific composition scoring mode, stores commonly used typos and new
words dictionary, and provides a wealth of commercial English letters
and English Composition templates and other resources. It is completely
free for individual users, providing online version, desktop version,
Mac version, Windows 8 version application, word plug-in, writing
template, such software is very practical for learning English,
especially error correction function, intelligent software It is 100%
accurate, but the degree of use is still sufficient.
Link: 1Checker
PolishMyWriting
Pasting the written article or paragraph in the text box above, the
system will automatically recognize the grammatical errors and spelling
errors. All spelling errors will be marked in red, and grammatical
errors will be marked in green. The most important thing is that
PolishMyWriting will also intimately write suggestions in blue font.
Link: PolishMyWriting
Reverso Spell Checker
In addition to checking grammar and spelling errors, it also helps to
find synonyms for each word in the article. The most important thing is
to make some suggestions to delete some words, add new words, change
punctuation, etc.
Link: Reverso Spell Checker
The Writers' Diet
The Writer's Diet will help you energize your writing and strip
unnecessary padding from your prose. First, diagnose your verbal fitness
levels by taking the online WritersDiet Test. Next, follow the
no-nonsense advice in each chapter of the book to strengthen and tone
your verbal muscles. Writers at every level, from students to
professionals, will benefit from the Writer's Diet workout. Before long,
you will find your self producing stylish, energetic prose every time
you put pen to paper.
Link: The Writers' Diet
Cliche Finder
Cliche Finder is a Cliche software that can help you find out the
articles used in the article. All Cliche will be marked red, suitable
for further inspection after writing.
Link: Cliche Finder
Hemingway
The analysis function of Hemingway Editor can analyze the words and
readability of the article, which would be useful for verbose person. As
long as the written paragraphs are copied and pasted onto the software,
it will tell the author where to streamline and where to delete. Which
sentences will make the reader Confuse, and which should use the active
voice rather than passive. Of course, in addition to this, it will also
give some tips on how to replace the original sentence, make the
sentence more concise, and score the index for readability.
Link: Hemingway
Improvement Tools
Write & Improve
Cambridge officials have launched a heavyweight English writing
online practice pen and evaluation system that serves the majority of
candidates and English lovers. The website interface navigation is very
clear. Click "Start writing" on the homepage to start the trial without
registration. Selecting an entrance first is equivalent to setting a
level goal you want to achieve, including beginner, intermediate and
advanced. Immediately afterwards, you can enter the "Workbook"
equivalent to the writing question bank that meets the goal of the level
you just selected. The launch of the Write & Improve website is
good news for candidates who want to prepare for Cambridge
certification. The propositions of the writing test are very
sophisticated. Can the dry text (Rubrics) guide students to complete the
writing task while pointing out the writing requirements, and assist
them in multiple review and correction, which is of great importance and
difficulty. , Not a general "simulation problem". Therefore, Cambridge
officials can launch this platform with its rigorous and professional
proposition requirements in the form of AWE (Automated Writing
Evaluation).
Virtual Writing Tutor
Virtual Writing Tutor's grammar detection function is very diverse.
It can count words, detect spelling of words, check sentence grammar,
look up dictionaries, print, etc. Coping the text to be detected into
the text box and select the required function.
Format
Purdue Online Writing Lab (Purdue OWL)
It is Purdue's writing lab, all of which are instructions about
writing in English. The website mainly provides guidelines for two
common academic paper writing formats and some other writing reference
resources that academic workers may use.
Educational Benefits of Writing Enhancement Tools
From Students' Perspective
•Students can polish their writing and acquire the knowledge of academic writing
It creates opportunities for students to practice and sharpen a
number of writing skills, including the ability to check the spell and
grammar errors in their own writing assignments, cultivate critical
thinking via sorts of online feedbacks, and create in-depth reflective
responses.
•Students are more likely to approach academic literacy
As an important part of academic literacy, writing assignments
reflect students’ learning process of the target language. Via writing
enhancement tools, students’ lexical resources would be more abundant,
sentence structures would be more authentic, which would be a benefit to
approaching academic literacy.
From Faculty Members' Perspective
•Provide metrics for teachers to assess students
•Faculty members spend less time on proofreading
Limitations
•Limitation in Accuracy: Because of the use of big data analysis and
intelligent methods, there may be certain limitations about accuracy.
Therefore, learners should pay attention to revision and improvement
when using these tools. It would be a good choice for learners to
occasionally use multiple writing enhancement and polish tools to
achieve the article's polish and modified effect.
•Limitation in Network Speed: After attempts in Mainland China,
Hong Kong, Japan and other areas by testers, some of the tools may
collapse since sometimes there may have a capacity of thousands of
members online during the peak time. In addition, due to some network
limitations, some tools are unavailable or the Internet speed will be
limited in some areas.
See also
TELL or CALL
Input Theory and Technology
Output Theory and Technology
Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis(CA)
The SAMR Model
Scaffold Students' Writing with Technology
References
Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2): 213-238.
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated
cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1),
32–42.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213–238.
Coxhead, A. (2011). The Academic Word List ten years on: Research and teaching
implications. TESOL Quarterly, 45, 355–362.
Ellis, R. (2012). Language teaching research and language pedagogy. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Krashen, Stephen (1985). The Input Hypothesis: Issues and implications. London: Longman.
Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 19, 37–66.
Puentedura, R. "SAMR and TPCK: Intro to advanced practice." Retrieved February 12 (2010): 2013.
Puentedura, R. (2010). SAMR and TPCK: Intro to advanced practice. Retrieved February, 12, 2013.
Walker, A. and White, G. (2013). Chapter 1: Learning. Preview the
documentTechnology Enhanced Language Learning: Connecting Theory and
Practice
Wingate, U. (2018). Academic literacy across the curriculum:
Towards a collaborative instructional approach. Language Teaching,
51(3), 349-364.
Yilmaz, Y. (2016). The role of exposure condition in the
effectiveness of explicit correction. Studies in Second Language
Acquisition, 38, 65- 96.
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