Grammarly, An Online Essay Helper For Students

Brian Martin

Copy Support

The Lynn Library made a historic decision earlier this fall when they purchased the online tool, Grammarly, from an institutional subscription so students may use it to their own benefit.

 

Grammarly is an online resource that was designed with the goal of helping students fix up their essays before handing them in to their professors.

Grammarly assists them by detecting small mistakes they may have missed when checking over the paper, such as grammatical and vocabulary errors.

 

“Grammarly helps ensure your professor focuses on the content of your work rather than getting distracted by grammar errors,” said Amy Filiatreau, library director.

 

In order for students to get their hands on this new online resource, they must first create an account by using their Lynn email address. But they will also need another prerequisite to ensure their access.

 

“Students create an account by going to www.grammarly.com/edu – make sure you use the .edu version. Use your Lynn email address to sign up, and you’ll need an access code which you can get on MyLynn – log in, go to Academics, and look for Grammarly in the quick links,” said Filiatreau.

 

After creating an account, students can then make use of Grammarly by uploading their papers onto the website. Once uploaded, the website will give indications about where there are hiccups in the paper and then offer solutions on how to fix them.

For example, the website may say that one word is the wrong choice for a sentence, and offer a better option.

 

With students continuously getting assigned papers as the year goes on, they might rely on Grammarly to help fix their papers’ flaws. It would seem that many students are currently taking advantage of the website to assist them in fixing up their papers.

 

“I think we’ve had almost 300 students that have signed up for accounts, so that’s really pretty good,” said Leecy Barnett, reference and instruction librarian. “And I think generally everybody whose used it has liked it.”

 

There already does seem to be positive feedback about how useful Grammarly is. In fact, some students prefer it to Microsoft Word’s autocorrect options.

 

“Every grammar error that you make in your paper, Word doesn’t catch it,” said LaShonna Goodman, 3.0 program sophomore. “But Grammarly catches it, which is amazing because I get higher grades on my papers.”

 

Even though Grammarly has become useful to students, there are other ways for students to check their work. One professor was able to explain other methods of correcting papers.

 

“You should read out loud your paper, you should edit your paper not once but twice and you should look up the rules of grammar and learn them,” said Professor Sophia Stone. “So Grammarly will catch a lot of the mistakes, but it’s not going to catch all the mistakes.”

 

While Stone’s comments reveal that Grammarly has some flaws, students are continuing to rely on the website for its usefulness. Hopefully students can earn higher grades on their papers thanks to Grammarly.

Brian Martin

Brian Martin is entering his final semester and intends to make the most out of it. As his time with iPulse is coming to an end, Martin looks back on his previous years and cherishes all the experiences he has had in such a short period of time. Having received numerous academic accolades and partaking in different internships, including one with the Miami Herald, Martin is only striving to learn even more and succeed following his graduation this May. After graduation, he plans to move to Los Angeles and work for a pop culture news organization like IGN. Being a nerd at heart, his passions include playing video games and reading comics.

2 thoughts on “Grammarly, An Online Essay Helper For Students

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.