Moving beyond grammar
I admit it. I struggle with helping my students become more confident in their writing abilities. By the time I get them as juniors in my Composition I class, they seem more concerned about the grammar in their writing and less about their voice, ideas, and support. I’m not sure who pounded this idea in their heads, but they seem to equate good writing with good grammar. They could have perfect grammar and lack a cohesive argument, but they would think it was great writing. I agree grammar is important — it is just not the most important aspect of writing.
As a department, we have tried to combat this idea by encouraging our students to use online grammar checkers. In theory, we thought if they checked their drafts for grammar before conferencing with us about their papers, they would have more confidence. And if they had more confidence and thought their writing was good because of good grammar, maybe, just maybe, we could have more productive conferencing without being asked if they needed a comma twenty times. All of their Chromebooks have Grammarly installed, so they automatically check their Google Docs. Free ones we suggest to the students are Hemingway Editor, Slick Write, The Writer’s Diet, and Analyze My Writing. As a department, we looked at these around five years ago, but we haven’t really checked them since.
So how do these websites stack up since I last checked them out? Do they really help students with their grammar? In the past, students have commented on some of the features of these aids, and sometimes, it leads to a great grammar discussion. To test these sites out, I used an essay I wrote for a grant contest that included citations where I ultimately won second place and received a classroom set of over-the-head headphones to use for podcasts in my classroom.
First up, the Hemingway Editor, which has always been a student favorite because it is quick, color-coded, and gives a readability grade level. My readability was grade 12, but it told me I should aim for grade 9 without an explanation as to why. Twenty-one of my sentences were hard or very hard to read, and several of these instances included blended quotes or a list of podcasts I wanted to use. Pluses? I didn’t have any passive voice, and I met the Hemingway Editor’s goal of having fewer than three adverbs. I agree with my students that it is quick, and the color-coding allows for an easy understanding of results, though it didn’t have in-depth explanations of everything.
Slick Write seems so confusing to me, and if I think that, I’m sure my students think the same. The site forces you to click on different tabs on the side, read info on the bottom, and hover over different colors every time you switch a tab, and most of the information is statistics without much explanation. I did have a grade 12 readability on this site as well without any explanation as to why it was or was not good, but at least it verified Hemingway Editor’s readability .
After trying The Writer’s Diet, I could see it being a good tool for teaching grammar since it basically highlights different parts of speech. My writing was “lean and fit,” and if you read about the tool on the website, it is best used in conjunction with Helen Sword’s book The Writer’s Diet. Since I haven’t read the book, I don’t know if it would make the tool more beneficial.
Analyze My Writing is a more user friendly version of Slick Write. It basically lists statistics of my writing, but it is actually on the main page. I found I had to click the “Analyze Text!” button every time I wanted to see different information like the readability where my text was a grade 12 to 13, depending on which of the five readability index was looked at. This site does a better job of explaining the different components, but I doubt all of my students would take the time to check the resources out.
Is there value from these sites? I think some are better than others, and I think they would help students clean up their writing for grammar. I liked that these weren’t really checking for plagiarism, and there was explanation on some of the sites. I also realized through my experiement that I need to go through each site with the students and explain the features of them. Then, they can choose one they like or prefer for their grammar checking.
Last year, we started using The Graide Network, which allows us to have six student writings receive feedback from college students and college grads through the magic of Google! You can upload your own rubric or use one they have on their site, and primarily, they give inline comments about content or argument as well as whatever area I ask them to focus on. Our students get the benefit of extra conferencing, and sometimes, students don’t listen to what their teacher suggests when they will listen to a grad student at University of Tennessee. And while we use The Graide Network, I still conference with my students before, during, and after they’ve received their online feedback. Now, as part of the National Writing Project Ahead of the Code grant, I’m going to look at how these online tools paired with The Graide Network can help my students become better writers. The students will get the benefit of an online grammar checker (or two!), conferences with me, and feedback from a “graider.” Will this process help my students become better writers and not focus on grammar as the sole indicator of writing? I sure hope so.
