Seven EdTech Tools That Make It Easy to Teach Writing Skills by Lucy Benton offers great tools to advance the writing skills of your students. All you have to do is give them the links that are contained here.

Introduction

• Writing skills are critical for students. They need them not only for English class but across different subject areas because these skills give an opportunity to express ideas clearly and concisely. Whether you have the time to teach writing skills in your class or not, your students should always continue to improve them. As a teacher, you can give an excellent opportunity to take advantage of various online resources for mastering writing. Each of them is unique and targets specific areas of writing to help the user become an expert. Let your students become the experts as well! Let’s see the tools right now!

1. MindMup – for Constructing ideas

• Writing an academic essay without a clear idea of the structure should be avoided. At some point, you will get confused about what to write next and stumble into the wall of different ideas. As the result, it may take additional time and effort to complete the work. Teachers could advise their students to use MindMup to avoid these issues. It is a mind-mapping tool that allows creating an outline for the paper that helps students to stay focused on the topic.

2. Cliché Finder – for originality

• As a teacher, you are always happy when your students submit original essays without all those cliché phrases. Of course, they may sound pretty cool but in many cases, they are used just to reach the word limit plus they undermine originality. To help your students always make original works, you can recommend this tool. It detects cliché phrases, so the user can think of other options to replace them. Also, be sure to advise your students to use it after the first draft of the paper in order to make it simpler to provide corrections.

3. Purdue Online Writing Lab – for academic writing skills

• For everything related to academic writing this is the most comprehensive source of knowledge. Formatting, referencing, style, advice, templates, you name it – everything could be found there. Students from all over the world use this tool for guiding their academic writing effort. Purdue should also be used by your students as well, regardless if they are in a high school or college. This guide has all answers regarding academic writing.

4. Best Essay Tips – for individual writing coaching

• In many cases, it is impossible for a teacher to provide every individual student with attention. This means that a remote help source should be used to play the role of an educator. This tool offers an individualized advice services regarding academic writing. It employs both recent graduates and professors to ensure that the writing advice is relevant and timely.

5. Thesis Generator – for creating thesis statements

• All students should master the art of generating thesis statements that guide the composition of essays and research papers. This tool from Ashford is great for this task because it provides detailed instructions on creating a thesis.Furthermore, it provides examples and explanations of every detail to make sure the user understands everything. By using this tool, your students will become skillful in writing effective theses!

6. Citation Machine – for citations and references

• Citing and referencing could be hard. There are so many rules and formats to follow, it’s easy to forget something. However, even a couple of silly mistakes could influence the grade, so this skill should be mastered. The good news is, it can be automated! When learning APA, MLA, and other formatting styles, recommend this tool to students to improve their skills. As a result, they will properly cite the sources plus learn the importance of citing works of others.

7. Word counter – for writing discipline

• Do some of your students have the tendency to go over word limit when they write essays? If the answer is yes, you will definitely benefit from this tool. It is an online writing environment that shows the number of words as the user writes them. It is super easy to watch the progress and think ahead. Plus, it has some cool stats like speaking time, keyword density, and setting limits.

Lucy Benton

• Lucy is an writing coach, editor who finds her passion in expressing her own thoughts as a blogger, who currently works at Admission service. She is constantly looking for the ways to improve her skills and expertise. If you’re interested in working with Lucy , you can find her on Facebook.

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