Incorporating Grammarly Into Your Writing Process
You might already be familiar with Grammarly, but if you aren’t: Grammarly is a grammar-checking program that is available to you for free as a Walden student. In the Writing Center, we recommend Grammarly in a number of situations; if a student’s paper contains a great deal of sentence-level interference (i.e., the student’s meaning is obscured by grammar issues), for example, or if a student wants help immediately and we have no openings in our schedule, we’re likely to point him or her toward this software. We also recommend that students use Grammarly as an early step in their revision processes, because it can help them improve their paper in the short term and, more importantly, strengthen their writing skills in the long term.
To get started with Grammarly, click the big green Grammarly button on our home page. Instructions for logging into Grammarly should appear in your browser, and, once you’re in, you should see a screen like this.
Simply copy
the text of your paper in your word processor, paste it into this window, and
click Start Review. A progress bar will appear, and Grammarly will take a few
moments to analyze your text. When it’s done, your text will likely have highlights
in some areas, and a list of potential errors will appear in the column to the
right.
Here, for
example, I’ve had Grammarly review my previous blog post, and
Grammarly has noted several potential errors. (For the record: these were not
actually grammar issues but stylistic ones—Grammarly reviewed my text as if it
were a formal academic essay rather than an informal blog post, so it noted
issues that were, in fact, the result of conscious choices that I made about my
tone and style in this piece.) You’ll notice that, while Grammarly has flagged issues
that I can look into—preposition usage, parallelism, passive voice, etc.—it
hasn’t given me any corrections. Instead, it offers thorough explanations of
the issues it has noticed and, using generic examples, models I could follow to
reduce the prevalence of these issues in my text.
You might
find this a bit frustrating, especially if you’re used to Microsoft Word’s
spelling and grammar checker, which underlines trouble spots and allows you to
replace them in one click with auto-corrected versions. However, I argue that
this apparent weakness of Grammarly’s is actually its strength. Word’s tools
are powerful and useful, but they’re often flat-out wrong—e.g., replacing text
that should be “martial art” with “marital art”—because Word is, after all, a
computer program with no understanding of context or meaning.
By explaining
grammar issues rather than fixing them for you, Grammarly can teach you the
principles behind these revisions, helping you make the right change in your
text and use this new skill in your future writing. (It also leaves the choice
of whether to make these changes up to you. When you’ve used a contraction, for
instance, or intentionally ended a sentence with a preposition, as I did in the
example above, you can choose to ignore Grammarly’s suggestions if they aren’t
applicable to that particular situation.) This requires a bit more thinking and
effort on your part, of course, but it will pay off in the long run; by
learning from Grammarly, eventually you may no longer need its help.
I encourage
you, then, to incorporate Grammarly into your writing process. You might use it
after you write your first draft, or you might prefer to give your paper a
once-over at the very end, just before you turn it in. If you make an
appointment to have your paper reviewed by a real, flesh-and-blood tutor (like
me or my colleagues), you could also use Grammarly, and revise your draft
accordingly, before you submit your paper to the Writing Center. That way, your
tutor can spend less time commenting on sentence-level issues and more time
discussing big-picture ones like tone, style, and organization. Above all, the
most important thing is to use this tool—and this is true for all writing
tools—in a way that you find helpful.
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Wonderful tool to use, especially for this 4th year residency! Thanks
ReplyDeleteGrammarly is awesome! I just finished my first class with Walden. I started using Grammarly after I got the feedback on my first application assignment from my professor. My professor commented that my writing improved a lot since I started using it! The explanations are really very helpful in so many ways.
ReplyDeleteWe're glad you like it, Imelda!
DeleteI have registered for Grammarly, but the icon is no longer on my home page, how do I get it back. As it is, I have to go all the way to the Writing Center site before I turn into grammarly, please help.
ReplyDeleteI just discovered the wonderful world of Grammarly and I love it. I do not see the icon on my home page though. I have to go to through the writing center each time I use it. I need help with this.
ReplyDeleteWe're glad to hear that Grammarly is helpful for you, Christiana! While the HOW of doing so will vary between internet browsers(Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome), you should be able to Bookmark Grammarly or set it as one of your favorite pages.
DeleteAny information as to why we no longer have Premium access as Walden students? I'll admit it, I am hooked.
ReplyDeleteHi MC. Thanks for reading the blog. The Writing Center doesn't really oversee the administration of Grammarly, so we don't have any additional information at the time. However, if you email WritingSupport@waldenu.edu (our writing help account that is monitored 24 hours a day), they will be able to get you in contact with the people who might know more.
ReplyDeleteFor now, I can share with you this link to the Writing Center's overview page on Grammarly, which may be able to help you work with the tools we currently have at our disposal:
http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammarly
I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your search for information!
Follow Up to MC's Question:
ReplyDeleteFor about a half hour last Friday morning (Nov. 11, 2016), Walden users signing in to Grammarly may have received a prompt to choose a paid subscription. The issue is now resolved, and you should continue to have free access to the service. However, if you encountered that message this morning and paid for a subscription, please contact Grammarly support for assistance: https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Thanks for your patience, everybody!
what if I being asked for my school's access code?
ReplyDeleteHello. Here is some information on using your Walden email account to access Grammarly. Please note that since we do not administer Grammarly, any administrative questions you have should be directed to Grammarly. http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammarly/accessing
Delete