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Review of Write and Improve Website
Write and Improve is a website sponsored by Cambridge University Press’s English department. It provides short leveled writing tasks for English language learners. The website’s artificial intelligence provides feedback to students who are encouraged to edit resubmit their writing until it receives a 5 out of 5 rating. The service is free for limited access to the site and there is a subscription to “Test Zone” or “Class View”.
The AI for this site works surprisingly well. There are a few times a fluent English speaker may get stumped by the feedback but this is not that common. Students get immediate feedback on their mistakes. Much of the feedback is basic vocabulary and grammar mistakes which is very useful. The second type of feedback is when students don’t answer the questions or follow the task instructions even if their English is accurate. Both types of feedback are useful to students before they consult the teacher. Students get in the habit of reviewing and editing their work themselves. Sometimes students will resubmit their work over 10 times.
This automation of the basic feedback loop allows teacher feedback to be more impactful and useful. I really enjoyed roving around helping where students got stuck while the whole class was actively typing away. Usually, I didn’t help much until they were getting 3/5. The computer would help with the…
