Hemingway is a free online tool that helps students analyze their writing. By simply pasting a passage or essay and "edit", the program highlights parts of student writing that use passive voice, adverbs, and overly complex sentences. It gives a count of how many sentences are included and out of those, how many of those could confuse readers without revision. I've done a similar activity using highlighter pens for students to identify patterns in their own writing. However, this program provides students immediate and easy to follow tips on how to improve trouble areas, making it an ideal learning tool for emerging writers.
Students often neglect or resist the revision part of the writing process. For their final essay this term, students were asked to copy their essays into Hemingway to check for readability. It was clear that all papers require a revision process. In the future, I'd like to use this tool for "virtual peer" editing.
No comments:
Post a Comment