The Review of Virtual Writing Tutor

The Virtual Writing Tutor is one kind of writing correction website founded by Nicholas Walker who is  an ESL teacher at Ahuntsic College in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. And  it was launched  on April 5th, 2012.  The goals of this website are given below:

                      a. to increase the quantity of corrective feedback available to the students
                      b. To improve its quality
                      c. To improve its timeliness
                      d. To increase its frequency
                      e. To enhance ESL writing pedagogy

 In the Virtual Writing Tutor website, there are three types of correction tools e.g. grammar checker, spelling checker and punctuation mark checker. In terms of grammar checking procedure a person can write on the text box and click on the 'check grammar' option. Then the website automatically check the grammar and give feedback about both grammar and punctuation. And spelling checker gives the feedback of correct and wrong spelling and give suggestions and recommendations of correct spelling. Here, the spelling checker is working in the case of wrong spellings but the grammar checker is much more contradictory with the goal statements because it is not working appropriately. I wrote three wrongly ordered sentences but the feedback was not appropriate at all. In my second sentence, there were some major mistakes but the Virtual Writing Tutor website gave feedback that there were not grammar errors in that sentence.

In the case of advantages of using the Virtual Writing Tutor website that this site might help the learners and language users to check or correct the spelling mistakes and punctuation errors in some extent. Moreover, in grammar checking feedback it gives an option to report or submit about any wrong feedback such as they use an option '(Not an error? Report it)'. But in terms of grammar checking it should not be used for the students because it may be harm their learning and leads them to the inappropriate path. In this review, I put some examples that easily proves that this site is not appropriate website to use in the classroom or anywhere to check the grammar mistakes and punctuation mistakes and other staff.

The Screenshots

Grammar Checking Examples from Virtual Writing Tutor: 

Example 1:

Text: i got to dhaka austrilia canada and amarica

Statistics :
Word count : 8
Sentence count : 1
Average Words/Sentence : 8

1. You wrote: i got to dhaka austrilia canada and amari...
   
   Feedback: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter   (Not an error? Report it.)
   
   
2. You wrote: i got to dhaka austrilia canada and amari...
   
   Feedback: This should be written in uppercase: 'I'.   (Not an error? Report it.)
   
   Link: Capitalization error
   
3. You wrote: i got to dhaka austrilia canada and amarica
   
   Feedback: Names of countries should be capitalized. This should be written with an uppercase letter: 'Canada'.   (Not an error? Report it.)

 Example 2:

Text:  Rubi cold Shoma to attented the tommorow class about song. But shoma refuse it because she felt coldness in hot weather.

Statistics :
Word count : 21
Sentence count : 2
Average Words/Sentence : 11

No errors detected.

 Example 3:

Text: I loved the football and cricket but i hatred the resling game. I got to the stadium to saw the play but it was crowdy yet. I got back to the home

Statistics :
Word count : 32
Sentence count : 2
Average Words/Sentence : 16

1. You wrote: I loved the football and cricket but i hatred the resling game. I got to the...
   
   Feedback: 22 You have a problem with your verb consistency. You use a past form, "loved," but you follow it with a with a Present Simple verb, 'cricket'. Consider revising your first verb: 'I loved the football and cricketed but '   (Not an error? Report it.)
   
   
2. You wrote: I loved the football and cricket but i hatred the resling game. I got to the st......
   Feedback: This should be written in uppercase: 'I'.   (Not an error? Report it.)
   
   Link: Capitalization error
   
3. You wrote: ... to saw the play but it was crowdy yet. I got back to the home
   
   Feedback: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.   (Not an error? Report it.)

Spelling Checking Example: 

Example 1:  i got to dhaka austrilia canada and amarica.

Example 2: Rubi cold Shoma to attented the tommorow class about song. But shoma refuse it because she felt coldness in hot weather.

Example 3: I loved the football and cricket but i hatred the resling game. I got to the stadium to saw the play but it was crowdy yet. I got back to the home