What is Grammarly?
Grammarly promotes itself as a spelling and grammar correction tool but I can tell you that it does even more than that. It works like an English language teacher guiding you to understand your mistakes and improve your written English.
For many years now there have been tools that English language learners or non-native English speakers working as professionals, could adapt to help them improve their writing skills. MS Word’s spelling and grammar checker was once something I recommended students used to help them identify and understand their mistakes. However, not only did this require effort and self-discipline from the student, but it was also time-consuming and went against the logic of the tool itself. The autocorrect and suggestions on Smartphones and tablets were also useful to improve students accuracy because the corrections and suggestions are usually correct. No need to decide if the correct preposition after responsible is of/for because the suggestion tells you. However, once again this was useful but not the function of the tool and didn’t actually involve learning and improving. To learn from it you had to do extra work.
This is why Grammarly is so different and effective! Grammarly is designed to improve your writing skills, you do not need to adapt the tool to your needs or to force yourself to use it as a learning tool.
How it works
Grammarly finds and highlights a whole range of problems (250! ) in a text, not only spelling. These include grammar errors, punctuation, hyphens, and even vocabulary. It simply identifies problems and highlights them with a red line. When you click on the problem you do not see a simple “change” option, you are offered a suggestion and a reason why Grammarly thinks your word is not correct. By clicking on the “more” option you are shown the reason your choice is probably not correct and examples of the correct use.
This is a massive improvement from standard spelling and grammar checkers. So Grammarly gives you three things here:
· It helps you to see a mistake.
· It helps you understand why it is a mistake.
· It helps you avoid it next time you write.
Why is it useful to prepare for the Cambridge Business Exams?
Because Grammarly checks so much and so quickly you will be able to see your regular “silly” mistakes, the ones that frustrate your boss/teacher/yourself. The missing s with he/she/it or with a plural, subject verb agreement (He have or They was), or incorrect or missing articles. By seeing your regular mistakes marked incorrect, when you next write you are more aware of them and less likely to make the same error.
It will also help you with mistakes you did not even know you were making. It corrects incorrect prepositions, misused vocabulary, and spelling mistakes. Thanks to the suggestions and explanations, if Grammarly shows you an error you will quickly understand it and be able to avoid it next time you write. You can also learn vocabulary because Grammarly gives you synonyms if it thinks your word is not correct. It helps a lot with punctuation too, especially the use of commas and hyphens. Nowadays, people are never sure when to use or not to use commas – even teachers can find this complex to teach and to use. Grammarly is excellent at this.
It is easy to set up and use too. You register and you can use Grammarly in three different ways (you should use them ALL) –
· a Grammarly application on your desktop
· a Chrome extension
· as part of MS Word
The application is very useful when preparing for an exam. You write your text in a separate document without any instant corrections then copy and paste your text into the Grammarly app. In seconds any problems are highlighted with all of the features mentioned above to help you learn – this is much quicker (and definitely much cheaper) than giving it or sending it to a teacher. If you are also working in English then installing it on MS Word makes sense because your work is checked and corrected immediately, improving your professional writing.
Grammarly does not stop there. It works with you, not only does it try to get to know you it also listens to you. You can select the type of English- choose British English to help you prepare for the exam, and style options – choose Formal to help you write in the correct formal style for the Writing Papers.
In short, Grammarly is like having your personal English language teacher available 24/7. Grammarly is the one tool you need to improve your writing on your own.
It is so good that even native English speakers use it, and it is free! So don’t hesitate and download Grammarly now.
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