Virtual Writing Tutor has 3 levels of membership. Members can check 3000 words at a time, save text and feedback, translate feedback into 70 languages, create hypertext narratives and essay outlines, send PDFs with voice recordings, track errors, play error correction games, post essays to forums for additional feedback, with more features on their way.
Read on »Writing skills
30 conversation questions to ask a traveler or a voice-enabled chatbot
You know someone who has just returned from a trip. You want to have a conversation with them, but you worry that you won’t be able to sustain the conversation. What you need are conversation questions! Here is a list of conversation questions to ask a returning traveler after their trip abroad. Practice asking these
Read on »Automatically Scored Emails
Emails follow a predictable pattern, with a salutation, a paragraph explaining the email’s purpose, the main content of the email, a call to action, a paragraph indicating that a reply is expected, a close, and finally a signature.
Read on »How can I use “leading cause” in a sentence?
You can use the phrase “leading cause” to help establish the importance of your topic in the introduction of your argument essay. It is usually used to talk about the main cause of a bad event.
Read on »7 Secrets to Write Like a Native English Speaker
English is one of the most common international languages, and many people note that it’s easy to learn. However, everything depends on your goals. If you’re an ESL student and you need to write academic papers, the learning process will certainly be much more difficult than when learning basic phrases as a traveler. Nevertheless, millions
Read on »How to Write and Revise an Argument Essay
Get your argument essay score in 2 seconds Simply click on this link to the Virtual Writing Tutor grammar check website. Compose your argument essay and click “Score Essay,” select “Argument essay,” and click “Check. Use the score and feedback to help you revise and maximize your score when you submit your essay to your
Read on »10 Effective Tips to Help You with Essay Writing
The writing process is complicated. You can easily get into a flow and churn out thousands of words in a couple of hours. On the other hand, it can also happen that you suffer from writer’s block for months. When you’re a student who needs to submit essays regularly, it’s important that you find a
Read on »How To Write A Story For Complete Beginners
Everyone loves to be entertained by a good story. You often find yourself reading the same novel several times. In the same way your friend’s story seems so funny, even if they already told it. How about kids? They love stories and can listen to one a hundred times and still ask you to read
Read on »Automated Essay Evaluation for Innovative Teachers and A+ Students
Get your essay scored and corrected automatically with this essay checker. It can score 4 types of essays: opinion, argument, film analysis, and literary.
Read on »RADARS: A Framework for Recognizing Source Text Reliability and Validity
Students can use the RADARS Framework described below to help them recognize, reflect upon, and defend the reliability and validity of the sources of information they use in their own academic and blog writing. With so much clickbait and false reporting being circulated on social media websites these days, writers need to make extra efforts
Read on »5 Persuasive Essay Writing Tools
Writing a persuasive essay is a complex task. Because the goal of a persuasive essay is to present one side of a tightly organized argument with supporting arguments and evidence, there are a number of skills you will need to write a good one. Sometimes called an opinion essay, the persuasive essay is widely used
Read on »How can I automatically evaluate opinion essays?
Do you teach opinion essays? Many teachers do. It is a common practice in English Second Language teaching to ask college level students to write a 4-5 paragraph opinion essay on a range of topics. An opinion essay goes by many names. Often, it is called the hamburger essay, the 1-3-1 essay, the persuasive essay,
Read on »Is my cover letter correct?
Let me help you write a better cover letter. I won’t give you a lengthy list of dos and don’t. Just submit the letter you have written and I will tell you how to improve it. If you teach cover letter writing, download a cover letter writing lesson that you can give to your students.
Read on »Interview with Canadian Poet Peter Van Toorn
Peter Van Toorn is the author of three books of poetry, Leeway Grass, (1970); In Guildenstern County, 1973; and Mountain Tea, 1985. As editor, he has published various collections over the years: Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry (with Ken Norris), 1982; The Insecurity of Art: Essays on Poetics (with Ken Norris), 1982; Lakeshore Poets, 1982;
Read on »6 Essay rating tools on the Virtual Writing Tutor
Many teachers would like to give better, more detailed feedback to students on their writing assignments but realize that there are not enough hours in the day to do so. With the arrival of artificial intelligence, faster feedback on essay writing tasks is now possible. The Virtual Writing Tutor offers six types of automated writing
Read on »How can I evaluate an argument essay in 2 seconds?
Many college teachers assign either opinion essays or argument essays to their English Second Language students. These highly structured writing assignments give students practice organizing their ideas and defending a point of view. The goal is to prepare students to go on and write research reports or graduate theses at university. However, when it comes
Read on »How can I evaluate achievement in a Business English course?
Businesses use a variety of effective advertising strategies. They can take the form of audiovisual media like videos and radio ads and print media like posters, brochures, business cards, and flyers. Flyers can be single-sheet promotional tools that list products, descriptions, and prices. Flyers are simple yet compelling ways of helping businesses to announce sales
Read on »How can I write an awesome thesis statement?
Writing awesome thesis statements involves knowledge and skill. It is a crucial step in learning to write high-scoring essays. To succeed, you have to know how to make a thesis statement well-structured, strong, action-oriented, and focused. What’s more, writing awesome thesis statements is a skill that takes practice to develop. Once you know what to
Read on »Clichés to Avoid
Second language speakers of English demonstrate an impressive familiarity with English when they use clichés in their speaking. Using common expressions shows people that you have been exposed to a lot of English in your life and suggests that you have achieved an intermediate level of proficiency. Nevertheless, advanced second language writers and first language
Read on »What are sentence length and sentence variance?
Conversational sentences tend to be short. In fiction, sentences are on average about 20 words long. In academic writing, they are about 40 words long. Whether you write fiction or academic prose, you will still want to vary the length of your sentences. Here’s why. This sentence has five words. Here are five more words.
Read on »What should I write in an email to my teacher?
Students aren’t often aware of the impact of their emails on their teachers. Well-written emails strengthen the relationship. Poorly-written emails will arouse resistance and opposition. You don’t want that. Teachers are committed to helping students succeed and prosper. Really. It only makes sense for students to learn to write emails that maximize their chances of
Read on »Transitions for Better Cohesion
Cohesion is what helps your reader understand the connection between your ideas. Transitions and conjunctions are the words and phrases that build cohesion. Here is a list of cohesion-building words. I have designed the Virtual Writing Tutor’s Cohesion Checker to measure the cohesion in your text by looking for transitions and conjunctions. When the system
Read on »What is the difference between a simple sentence, a compound sentence, and a complex sentence?
Learn the difference between simple, compound and complex sentences with anticipations, interruptions, and afterthoughts. In just 17 minutes, you will know how to punctuate and structure every sentence you will ever want to write. This article can also help you understand how to avoid common errors like fragment, run-on, and comma splice errors because understanding
Read on »Essay Writing in 9 Easy Steps
Follow these steps to write a successful essay. Step 1: Choose a purpose Which question will you answer with your essay? The question you attempt to answer will determine your purpose. What isn’t what it appears to be? Purpose = to inform What situation needs to change? Purpose = to persuade How have I been wronged?
Read on »30 Kickass Ways to Start an Essay
The purpose of the first sentence in your essay is to make your reader want to read your next sentence. In truth, every sentence you write has the same purpose: to keep them reading to the end. So, you have to start off strong. Your first sentence has to have some impact on the
Read on »Late? Use this Easy Essay Outliner Now
Writing an essay outline with an essay outliner. Itis easy. Just fill out a form to create your outline with this easy essay outliner. Essay outlines help you organize your ideas into an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion effortlessly. Read on to find out just how easy it is to write an essay outline.
Read on »Pen Pals
Do you have a pen pal? Have you ever had a pen pal? Probably not. Writing to a an anonymous correspondent used to be a popular hobby. Not anymore. It has fallen out of favour these days as people spend more and more time on social media websites. Perhaps, you don’t even know what a
Read on »5 Easy Blog Posts for Your ESL Writing Class
There is a new way to market products to consumers and get the attention of potential employers. It is called content marketing. The way it works is this: you publish articles (content) on a blog, and people looking for information using a search engine will find you and learn to like, trust and respect you
Read on »5 Great Reasons ESL Students Should Blog
There are over 150 million blogs on the internet today. Why so many? People read blogs and rely on them for information. Reading blogs is great, but why should ESL students start blogs? It is a good question. Here are 5 great reasons for ESL students to create a blog in English. 1. Improve your
Read on »Introducing Yourself Online and in Person
First impressions have a lasting impact. It is critical therefore to be equipped with the know-how to create the right impression on people you meet online or in person for the first time. This article focuses on how to achieve this when introducing yourself to a room full of people or to a pen pal
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