1. Grammarly: An Online Grammar
Checker
Instructional Tool Review
George Shamshayooadeh

2. Institutional Context
 Immigrant and Generation 1.5 Students
placed into
(Spanish dominant & English dominant
speakers):
1. Developmental English Composition Class
2. Freshman English Composition Class
 Writing and Grammar issues that need to be
addressed

3. Grammar: The Sticky Issue
 University-Wide Assessment – Students’ performance
in grammar, punctuation, and style lagging
 Needs to be addressed, but many instructors don’t
like to teach it – “the non-interventionist approach”
 Instructor feedback on student papers has had mixed
results at best
 Is time-consuming and uninteresting to many students
and some teachers
 Common understanding of grammar as a set of
prescriptive rules at the sentence level

4. New Approach to Grammar
Instruction
 Teaching grammatical issues in context (textual
approach)
“Grammar is not unidimensional and
meaningless; it embodies the three dimensions of
morphosyntax (form), semantics (meaning), and
pragmatics (use).” (Larsen-Freeman 2)
 Teaching Standard English Grammar (SEG)
should be sold to students as learning an
important language style/register that they would
add to their linguistic repertoire and marketability

8. Sample Student Text

12. Summary (Report)

13. Final Analysis
 Provides students with instant
feedback/suggestions to edit their papers
 Flexible and available anytime/anywhere
 Improves the final presentation of student
papers
 It has its limitations as a software though
(inform students about its limitations)
For Instructors:
 Frees teacher’s time to focus on the rhetorical
and content-related issues of writing (global
issues)

14. Free Grammarly Resources
 Grammarly Handbook
http://handbook.grammarly.com
A virtual grammar handbook that describes various
grammatical rules and offers examples of correct and
incorrect use. The rules are broken down into different
categories that make the site user-friendly. It also
shares ideas on academic writing, composition, style,
and editing.
 Grammarly Answers
http://answers.grammarly.com/
Grammarly Answers is a free service where users can
ask and answer any question related to English
grammar and writing. Any person can ask for help
there and receive an answer. Additionally, users can
try to answer questions themselves and improve their
English through explaining concepts to others.