An Online Writing Platform for Language Learners

I was really interested in this article, not only from an English Language Learners perspective, but also as a tool for teaching native English speakers to write. As I understood it, this platform goes beyond track changes and archives teacher and student comments in each draft of an essay progressively moving towards a final essay. The program correlates the number of errors, comments, and reoccurring problems. The program then automatically directs students to help pages on specific problem areas. Having graded multiple revisions of student essays, I see this tool’s ability to focus students on their own reoccurring errors (without having to rely on my memory of student’s individual trouble spots) as extremely valuable. In this way, while class time might focuses on overall class struggles, individual struggles are not left unaddressed. I also really liked the students’ ability within this program to send drafts to each other for peer-review and then archive comments from classmates. I think editing other classmates work is a great way to become a better editor of your own work and like to include as much peer editing as possible in my courses. Finally, I found the way this article broke down the platform based on the needs and uses of teachers, students, and researchers as an effective and persuasive breakdown for receiving funding and support. Wanting to know more, I went to the IWill website (http://iwillnow.org) mentioned in the article and was please to see the site has new posts made in 2009. That said, many links on the website were broken including the sign-up and contact us pages. I will try to get in touch with the web administrator to see if I can sign up and explore more.