I found out about Grammarly by accident and fell in love with it instantly. I renewed my Premium membership as soon as my trial expired. Grammarly is a great tool for both ESL learners and advanced learners. Grammarly is a program that instantly checks your writing for grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. The only downside is that it is not available on Google Docs, which is the writing platform I use the most. However, it is worth the effort to load up Grammarly for “one more set of eyes” to look at my writing to reduce any mistakes that I might have overlooked. In this post, I want to talk about the four reasons why I love Grammarly. In the follow-up post, I will go into details on how to use Grammarly to maximize your learning experience.
Grammarly is Everywhere
Grammarly runs on Chrome, Safari, and Firebox as a plugin. It is available on the web and as a Microsoft Words extension as well. As a plugin, it will check the page you are writing on, as long as it is compatible with Grammarly! For example, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail! Any time you see a green dot in the right corner of your message box, it means Grammarly is available to check your writing mistakes.
Grammarly in action.
Unfortunately, Google Docs is not available at this time. With Google Docs writing, I will copy and paste my writing into Grammarly. That is a workaround for now. I hope they will develop Google Docs integration in the future.
Green circle means Grammarly is available!
Grammarly – A Freemium Service
Grammarly is FREE, yes, F-R-E-E. The free version alone checks 150 critical grammar and spelling mistakes! It is more than sufficient for ESL learners. You do not have to get the premium version if you are not ready for it yet. Use what is available! 😃 If you want to take your learning to the next level and speed up your learning progress, then I highly recommend the Premium version. The Premium version covers 100+ additional advanced grammar and spelling mistakes. I also love the Vocabulary Enhancement feature since I tend to use a limited number of vocabulary.
Corrections with Explanations
Grammarly not only points out the mistakes for you but also gives you explanations with examples! The explanations offered with the corrections really help me learn some of the common mistakes that I tend to make when I write. On the online app, you will see the brief explanation by default. If you click on “More,” you will see the examples. Speaking of corrections, Grammarly corrects your grammar, vocabulary, spelling AND punctuation! I can never get my punctuation right, especially when it comes to quotation marks!
Grammarly – Click more to see the explanation
I have a tendency of using passive voice when I write. Grammarly points it out, but it does tell you that it is a style choice. If you do not like any suggestions, you can click on the “IGNORE” button to ignore the suggestion. My reason for using the “IGNORE” button is to get an accurate score. Yes, Grammarly gives you a score, which is very helpful for tracking your progress.
Grammarly – Click ignore to ignore the suggestion
These are the four reasons why I love Grammarly. In my next blog post, I will cover how to maximize your learning experience using Grammarly. Subscribe to the newsletter to get notified as soon as I post my follow up post.