Using &lt;i&gt;Grammarly&lt;/i&gt; to Enhance Students’ Academic Writing Skills

N A Zinkevich,T V Ledeneva

doi:10.24833/2687-0126-2021-3-4-51-63

Using <i>Grammarly</i> to Enhance Students’ Academic Writing Skills

N A Zinkevich, T V Ledeneva

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2021-3-4-51-63

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Abstract

The paper aims to present the results of the experiment in applying the online writing assistant Grammarly.com to evaluate ESP students’ essay writing skills. One hundred master students’ papers were processed by the application to identify persisting errors at a master’s level. Quantitative and qualitative methods enabled the researchers to analyze the essays by setting five parameters: audience, formality, domain, tone, and intent. At the other end, the application broke down the outcome by five measurable factors: correctness, clarity, delivery, engagement, and style issues. The representative number of the essays fed into Grammarly.com provided a vivid and reliable picture of which lexis, grammar, structure, or style issues still need addressing. The most common mistakes detected by Grammarly.com were punctuation, wordy sentences, redundancy, and the abundance of personal pronouns in a formal style. They show that the gaps in students’ academic writing need a remedial course. Another objective of the research was to explore the potential of the online writing tool for students’ self-study. Grammarly.com cannot do work for students: it cannot think for them, neither can it write for them, but it can help learners identify the reoccurring writing problems, eliminate them, and monitor the progress. The application could be particularly useful for advanced students. The functionality of the Grammarly premium version allows for a choice of styles, type of addressee, tone of writing, and many other nuances, which could be beneficial not only for studies but in future professional life. Nonetheless, despite Grammarly’s advanced features, it only suggests a better variant, sometimes it errs, and in no way is it a substitute for a teacher.

Highlights

The development of students’ academic writing skills is an integral part of any ESP (English for specific purposes) course
A humanities paper should meet the requirements of the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide
A social sciences paper calls for the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide, which instead, prescribes to title the sources’ page “References” and list authors by their last names followed by their first initials

Summary

Introduction

The development of students’ academic writing skills is an integral part of any ESP (English for specific purposes) course. The academic writing style needs special addressing as it stands out from all other registers for its formality, objectivity, and prescriptiveness. Different sciences and humanities call for different academic writing styles. A humanities paper should meet the requirements of the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide. According to this style guide, the source page is titled “Works Cited”, and the last name of each quoted author comes first followed by their first name. A social sciences paper calls for the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide, which instead, prescribes to title the sources’ page “References” and list authors by their last names followed by their first initials. Oxford style guide is a benchmark for British English [Chazal, 2012]

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