And The Survey Says . . .

Feedback about online writing tools from students

Early December snow in western Ohio

After twenty-three years of teaching, I’d like to think I know how the average sixteen and seventeen-year-old student thinks and feels about writing. But I also know I’m slow to their current slang, and spilling the tea is probably so 2019. So, in order to truly know what my juniors think about the various online writing tools we’ve been using, I did a Google survey and have data to analyze.

Before I did the survey, I had been letting the students choose which writing tool to use, and I was beginning to match them with tools I thought would help them. I don’t think any student had really used all of the writing tools on the same piece of writing, so I had them do that in order to complete the survey. I had them rate each tool and list what they specifically did and didn’t like about the tools. So without any further ado, here is what my students think about the online writing tools.

Grammark:

This has been the tool that has impressed me the most, and it seems like my students like it as well. Only 1.7% of them don’t find it useful while 68.9% of them find it useful or very useful.

Dislikes:

• “I don’t like how it doesn’t check for commas, run-ons, and things that are very specific.”
• “I’m not a huge fan of the way the site is set up. I wish you didn’t have to look at each category to see the issues and it would show them all together in the overview.”
• “I’m slightly disappointed that it doesn’t check for fragments.”

Likes:

• “It checks over a lot of things, and it is very detailed.”
• “It gives examples of how to revise the writing and highlights the specific phrases that need to be corrected or replaced.”
• “Overall, I think this tool did a good job of pointing out small details. Many of the issues it pointed out I would not have been able to find on my own. Especially with passive voice and normalizations. The suggestions it gave me helped me improve my essay so much.”

Hemingway App:

Students used this tool a lot during their sophomore year, and I have always liked how quick it is. I think it gives a nice overview of some issues without overwhelming the students. My juniors weren’t really impressed with it — 50% of them didn’t find it useful. Quite a few didn’t really have much of an opinion of it, and only 17.2% of them found it useful or very useful.

Dislikes:

• “It doesn’t give me suggestions. It’s saying how some sentences are hard to read but it can’t explain why they think it’s hard to read. It basically gives suggestions on how to dummy down your essay.”
• “I really don’t like how it just points out things that are “hard to read” or “very hard to read” yet it tells me it’s a paper with a 12th grade level… It also doesn’t give many suggestions to change things unless it’s a single word. Lastly, it says to aim for two or less adverbs and I think that’s annoying.”
• “It highlighted my quotes as ‘Hard to Read,’ and it was not as helpful as the previous website (Grammark).”

Likes:

• “I like how it points adverbs and passive voice out in my essay. The passive voice detector is extremely helpful as sometimes I find myself naturally writing in past tense.”
• “It emphasized any passive voice better than the other tools. Despite what I don’t like, it gives a decent list of statistics, like grade level and reading time, so it lets me know the complexity of the essay.”
• “I use this to check most of my essays and I like the way it color codes all of the issues at once so you can see how much of your essay needs work.”

EasyBib:

Before I started looking into online writing tools, I wasn’t even aware EasyBib had a service like this. I thought they strictly helped with citations, and I have only played around on the website a little to get a feel for it. About 47% of my students found the site to be useful/very useful while 25.9% thought it was not useful.

Dislikes:

• “It wanted me to edit some of my phrases into past tense. It also stopped suggesting after I clicked on a few highlighted phrases because I don’t have the Plus” version. I was really excited to finally be checked for comma errors, but couldn’t because apparently, I reached the non-plus suggestion limit. It also said it would check for plagiarism, but that must only be with plus.”
• “There are a lot of ads for the upgraded version, and it just makes the website cluttered and I feel like there are just better, more free options. I feel like the suggestions aren’t even accurate, either.”
• “May not always be the smartest I guess. I say this because it told me to switch one of my sentences to ‘the quarterback was thrown to the receiver.’ I don’t think a quarterback is gonna travel very far through the air lol.”

Likes:

• “It gave me a very in depth reorganization of one of my sentences. It rearranged part of it and added stronger verbs and it all flowed really nicely with the rest of the essay.”
• “It actually gave better suggestions. The tiny font underneath them asked you questions, which would help you to reflect on how to say what you wanted better.”
• “I like this tool a lot because it really points out all of the errors in your essay. Also with pointing the errors out they have a list of helpful suggestions on how to fix the mistake.”

SlickWrite:

Whenever I have used this site, it has seemed slow. I do think it has some good aspects to it, but I am never sure if my students will have the patience for it to load. It seemed my juniors liked it okay — 39.6% found it useful/very useful, and 23% said it was not useful.

Dislikes:

• “I wish it checked more things and gave suggestions to improve it. I probably wouldn’t use it again because it only checks three things that I don’t particularly need help with.”
• “I kind of wish they would give me suggestions on how to fix it. Like: instead of _____ try ___, _____ or ____.”
• “I don’t like how it doesn’t necessarily make suggestions in your essay. It more or less points things out like your quotes and if a sentence is simple or not.”

Likes:

• “It’s really cool that it shows you your sentence structure so you can check that you’re varying it. It can also highlight your quotes so you can make sure you have everything cited that you need to.”
• “There are a lot of useful attributes to this website, like the “flow” tabs tells you how well your paper flows. I also really like how it tells you what type of sentences you used. I am always trying to vary my sentence structure, and this is what I use for a lot of my essays.”
• “I like how it shows the prepositional phrases so I can narrow the amount of them down. I also like that it shows the recycled starting word.”

Grammar.com:

When I first checked out this website, I liked how it seemed like a reference guide. It has a lot of good info on it, including most commonly misspelled words and links for grammar explanations. My students did not really find this tool to be helpful when they put an essay on the site to have it checked. Only 13.8% found it useful/very useful, and 50% said it was not useful.

Dislikes:

• “I don’t like how it only focuses on a few areas that need improvement and does not give you options to fix the areas that it focuses on.”
• “The text was really small and didn’t really explain how to fix things or have an explanation of the criteria they were grading the paper on.”
• “It really only checked three areas of improvement.”

Likes:

• “All the few suggestions it gave were correct, and it pointed out something that the other websites didn’t catch”
• “It singles out just grammar and spelling. I think the grammar check is more accurate than it is on the sites that check for ten different things.”
• “The website itself has a list of commonly misspelled words and common grammatical mistakes.”

The Writer’s Diet:

This website is to really be paired with a book that I have not read. I am sure that would help get more out of the website. Students are introduced to this website in junior high, and it is by far the one they have used most consistently and more often. It does not surprise me that 46.5% of my juniors said it was useful/very useful while only 10.3% said it was not useful.

Dislikes:

• “It is pretty vague it only shows which words fall into the category and does not do any in depth searching of why that word is there and if the word is needed there for clarity of the sentences.”
• “I am really into the websites that give me suggestions on ideas I can put into my essay to fix it, and this one does not. I also don’t like how I can’t edit it where it marks my essay as wrong, or a be verb or something. I have to go back to the other box and fix it.”
• “I don’t like how it only shows me where I am at in each category without giving me suggestions to fix the errors.”

Likes:

• “I have used this website for years, so I am already familiar with using it. I like how it highlights every word that fits the category so you can see how many there are. It also shows a line of where it should be and what you actually have.”
• “It shows what ‘level’ your essay is at, which is nice because you can see your improvement. You can also focus on a certain area or everything together.”
• “I like how it gives a result according to how many of each phrase/word is in the essay. It makes you work for something and once you get all lean, you know your essay is not that wordy.”

Analyze My Writing:

I have to admit that I was overwhelmed by data when I first used this website. Once I used it more, I understood it better, and I could find the value in it. I think data-driven minds would really like this website. Because most juniors aren’t into data, it didn’t surprise me that only 19% said it was useful/very useful, and 53.4% said it was not useful.

Dislikes:

• “Some of the graphs and charts it made might require some sort of statistician to read, and it is somewhat odd navigating the website to specific areas.
• “It does nothing to help improve my writing. It just gives me the “stats” of my writing which does not make my essay any better.”
• “All the data provided is very hard to read/understand. I feel like a student would not take the time to try and understand what all of this data mean.”

Likes:

• “It shows the statistics behind your writing. For example, it gives the median word length and median sentence length.”
• “I like that it gives you a word cloud for all the words in the essay so you can see how many times you used each word.”
• “It examined the amount of commas, semicolons, colons, etc. in my essay and a mathematical chart showing my sentence layouts.”

Grammarly:

Last school year, the English Department pushed for Grammarly to be added to all of the student accounts at our school. Once it was rolled out, we all did a mini-lesson on how to use it in Google Docs. Since they are more familiar with it, and it is already on their Google Docs, it didn’t surprise me that the juniors liked it. Just over half — 52.7% — found it to be useful/very useful while only 12.8% said it was not useful.

Dislikes:

• “Sometimes, suggestions can only be unlocked if you have the premium or plus version and other times words are taken out of context.”
• “I don’t like that it doesn’t consider words in the context of the essay. It just looks at the individual words, and sometimes it is wrong.”
• “Sometimes I do not agree with its suggestions in the context of my writing and it gets annoying because it will keep highlighting the “error.”

Likes:

• “I love this tool. It helps so much when I am writing. Not only with my spelling, but with commas and overall grammar errors. I use Grammarly for anything involving writing on my computer.”
• “It gives a lot of helpful suggestions on grammar and how to fix writing errors that most people don’t even notice.”
• “It fixes all my papers and I don’t even need to go to a website to check my work.”

At the end of the survey, I asked the students if they used any other online tools and what they thought about them. Only two students listed a helpful website:

• “Someone just showed me Scribens.com during 6th period and I really liked it. It gave me all the suggestions color-coded (;p) and why they were wrong.”
• “I like to use PaperRater because it gives multiple ways to fix, including my transitions, and allows me to choose my grade and the purpose of the paper to give more accurate grading.”

I plan on checking these websites out as well since they seem like they could be helpful.

After analyzing all of my survey results, I have to admit I am highkey loving the data. This will allow me to better match my students with online writing tools. My ability to know my students’ slang may not be straight fire, but I now know how to best help them become better writers.