Introduction:

Teaching is deeply rewarding.

It is also a job that never ends. You can always do more, and there is always
more to be done. There is always the next class to teach. There is always
another meeting to attend. There is always more marking…so so much
marking.

And for that reason, me Lamia Ammedlous and my friend Hafsa Hafid are here
to get your back, and to help you ease some of the endless amount of
responsibilities that you have to do as a teacher.

Today we will present to you an online automated writing evaluation website!

And if you still remember from the last session. This program has been
developed to assist both native speakers and L2 learners to write more
accurately by providing them with automated corrective feedback. AWE system
use natural language processing techniques and machine learning to create
tool that are more powerful than traditional spelling and grammar checker.

It is often hard to find a free version of an AWE system; however, we are

exclusively introducing you with a free online AWE website… that is…Virtual
Writing Tutor!

Language teachers and students alike can benefit from it. This program is an
English-as-a-second-language grammar checker that writers, bloggers, and
other professionals can also use. Students can still learn writing even when
teachers are unavailable.

So how can we use it?

Hafsa: sign up

Lamia: Check grammar

First let us check the grammar together!

To check your grammar, all you need to do is click on the Check Grammar
button. And the system will check for common punctuation errors, common
grammar mistakes, contextual spelling errors, and word choice errors. The
results of the grammar checker are listed below the text area.

Let us click on the button, and see the results of our example.

As you can see the first grammatical error that was spotted by the system is
capitalization error it provides feedback that says that the sen……

Next to the correction you find more features that will assist you understand
the feedback more, for instance, translation…remember when we mentioned
the option of choosing the language you want to translate the text to?

The feedback here will be translated based on that language you chose in your
profile.

On top of that you’ve got text-to-speech option in which the feedback is

synthesized into a robotic speaker.

Hafsa: Check the vocabulary

Lamia: Check the topic sentence

In addition to vocabulary, we’ve got checking your topic sentence. And just to
keep in mind the topic sentence is not the only part of the paragraph or the
essay that you are allowed to check. We will later show you how you can score
your whole essay. But let us first explore how this website is going to examine
our topic sentence!

It is more in this case guidance than feedback.

Hafsa: check level

Lamia: Essay outline

Let us not ignore the fact that this website uniquely provides the possibility of
writing an outline to your essay or your students’ essay.

We opt writing an outline of an argumentative essay as an example.

It is easy to see that the outline is organized in form of questions to help

students have clear vision of the arguments they will adopt in the essay
For example paragraph 1 ….

Furthermore this system considers the counter argument paragraph in the

outline. Evidently in paragraph 4 the questions that were asked are…

Answering these questions can be the key to have a successful argumentative

essay, it will help students to construct and organize ideas in a sequential
manner and thoughtful flow.