Grammar is the very essence of writing. However creative your ideas or compelling your arguments may be, your writing will have little impact if the content is infested with errors. The fact that more than 60% of students miss the A grade because of grammatical errors in their paper prove why you need to ensure your writing has no linguistic errors. But, even the most established essay writers are bound to make mistakes when writing in a flow. So, how do you skip the hurdles? The answer lies in one of the best grammar checker tools out there – Virtual Writing.
Launched in 2012, Virtual Writing Tutor started as a simple grammar checking website and has evolved to be a lot more than that over the years.Several English professors and tutors have also sung songs of praises for the grammar checker that does a lot more than just highlight and rectify grammatical inconsistencies.
The best part of this free editing and proofreading tool is that it provides feedback and corrections, especially beneficial for ESL students to learn English independently. Hence, in a way, Virtual Writing Tutor can help you enhance your vocabulary, improve your sense of grammar, paraphrase sentences accurately, punctuate your content, and check spelling inconsistencies. If that isn’t enough, then the tool also serves the purpose of a paraphrase and word counter.
So, if you are still using VWT as a grammar checker, it is time you use the tool to its optimum level. Read on to find out how you can exploit every feature the tool has to offer.
12 Ways You Can Use the Virtual Writing Tutor
Here are the aspects that you can check using the Virtual Writing Tutor.
As a vocabulary checker
There are instances when you go on repeating the same words for the lack of a better word. However, using clichéd phrases and repeating stereotypical words bring down the quality of content. Now, you certainly cannot be learning the entire lexicon by heart to know alternative terms for every English word. This is where VWT comes in to save you. The tool can detect words that you have used a tad too many times and suggest you better and relevant alternatives. That said, the tool used advanced algorithms to determine which alternative suits the context of your writing.
As an essay outliner
Not many know this, but your academic paper’s outline can make all the difference in the world. There will be times when you will have a hard time understanding where to incorporate information about buy essay and how. In that case, you can use VWT as an essay outliner to map the structure of your paper. All you have to do is feed in the topic, and the tool will suggest which data and examples to include where.
To target structures
How many times have you written a creative and informative piece only to receive a disappointing B or a C? Well, the reason isn’t that the professor has bad blood for you. The mistake you are inadvertently making is shifting from the topic or the focus keyword of the academic paper. Virtual Writing Tutor helps you centre your piece on the target keyword and stops you from going astray towards irrelevancy.
As an error correction game
At the end of the day, the grammar checker is no ordinary tool and is more of an online tutor. To tap into the potential of the tool, you can use the inbuilt game in the tool to make learning grammar fun. The error-check game lets you win points by detecting errors in a piece of writing and rectifying them. You can even set the level of difficulty, and depending on your proficiency, check sentences or chunks of paragraphs.
To check the flow of your writing
Unless the different paragraphs of your piece flow smoothly and transitions into the next segment effortlessly, readers will lose focus. So, you must make sure that the transition between two parts of your paper link well and doesn’t seem abrupt. With the Word extension of the Virtual Writing Tutor on your laptop, you will know how smooth your ideas flow into each other. The tool highlights the transition sentences that seem vague and even suggest better options.
As a word counter
The art of being able to express your ideas while maintaining the word limit is difficult to cultivate. Moreover, if you fail to stay within the word limit, there are high chances that professors may deduct marks. Writing less than the word count may also show you in a poor light and give the impression that you ran out of ideas or did not know enough about the subject. In both cases, VWT can help you reduce the length of your content or provide you with more information about the topic.
Check the tone of your writing
Academic writing is way different from informal writing. When writing an essay, even on a casual topic, you cannot use words that you use in your everyday conversations. However, in the era of emojis and abbreviated texting language, we often tend to use words like “Ok” and “Hey” in our writing. With VWT on your laptop, you can be sure that your writing has not colloquial terms. You can also check the tonal structure of your writing using the tool.
To check syntactical errors
What most students do not realize is that grammatical errors aren’t the only thing to beware of. Even when a sentence is grammatically sound, it can be wrong due to syntactical errors. For example, using the past tense after using DID is a grammatical error. But using ‘usually in the middle of a sentence is a syntactic error that most grammar checkers fail to detect. Virtual Writing Tutor uses its AI-powered algorithm to detect and rectify such errors.
To check spelling and punctuation
How many times have you been confused about the repetitive double s in the word assassination? And let us not even talk about the riddle that LOSE and LOOSE is. The English language is no less than an enigma (read: though, bough, cough) and committing spelling mistakes is a common affair. Add to that; there are conventional differences in spellings as well. You can use Virtual Writing Tutor to ensure that there are no such spelling inconsistencies in your writing whatsoever.
As a paraphrasing tool
Paraphrasing isn’t as easy as it sounds – it isn’t just about rearranging words. You have to ensure that the sentences you restructure have the same essence as the original version. Moreover, the choice of words matters a lot in this case. This is where VWT comes in to work as a paraphrase generator. The tool helps you state a fact more clearly using relevant words.
To check the reliability of references and links
Not all data you find online reliable. Most students do not take the effort to dig dip and rely on Wikipedia for gathering data. When you end up using falsified data in your writing, your paper automatically becomes a subject of red flags. By using Virtual Writing Tutor as an extension on your laptop, you get to understand which sources are reliable and which aren’t. The tool underlines and flags every time you use a link that isn’t accurate.
As a glossary builder
As the name suggests, VWT serves the role of an online tutor by helping you build your personal glossary and enhance your vocabulary. You can add new words you have learnt while using the tool to your glossary, along with the definition of the terms. You can add parts of speech to form a sentence as an example of its usage. The tool also lets you generate text-to-speech pronunciation along with the automatic translation. In the end, you can use the published glossary to play a flashcard game online
Most grammar checkers cannot detect every error in a written piece because the system checks one sentence at a time. But with VWT, the advanced algorithms of the tool use the information in the surrounding context of a paragraph to determine the accuracy of the text. So, add the tool’s extension to your MS Word and enhance your grammatical and writing skills.
Author Bio: Timothy Heller has a PhD in Linguistics and is a professor at a renowned college in California, the US. He is also associated with the academic portal MyAssignmenthelp.com where he offers assignment help to students pursuing English Literature. Heller is a closet poet and loves to read in his free time.
Summary: Grammar is the very essence of writing, and Virtual Writing Tutors helps you ensure that the essence remains intact. In this blog, you will find a detailed guide for using the online grammar checker to its fullest potential.