Published on East Mojo in April 12, 2022
Want to improve your English? Don’t be over-dependent on writing apps
The jury is still out on
the efficacy of
grammar-checkers. While some feel there’s no harm in using them, there is
unanimity in one fact — if you want to improve your English, you have to get
your basics right
Most of you must have noticed the writing and grammar suggestions your
email composer or word processor offers when you start typing a mail. These are
just two examples of the myriad of English writing apps available out
there—offering services such as grammar-check, spell-check, writing styles, and vocabulary and syntax
suggestions.
Some may find them irritating but there are many who firmly believe or
are even confident that these apps would help them improve their English
language skills and grammar.
So the million-dollar question is — do these apps really help and if so,
to what extent? Experts say while they may help you detect typos and errors, or
even offer alternatives and suggestions, you won’t really get your English
grammar and language right unless you are thorough with your Wren and Martin
and well-read at the same time.
Learning a language doesn’t happen in one day; it’s a process. The more
you read and write, the more refined will be your language skills, the experts
say.
Then there are others who feel there are people who may not be strong in
the English language and so there is nothing wrong if they use such a facility
to correct their mails and communication.
All experts are, however, unanimous in stating that over-dependence on
these apps won’t do any good.
Sajni Mukherji, a former Professor of English at Jadavpur University, finds such apps irritating and prefers to stay away from them.
“I am conservative and don’t believe in the efficacy of these apps,
which automatically without my asking correct my spellings as I send messages
or write letters on the phone. And it is usually wrong
because they are assuming something and I want to say something completely
different,” Mukherji says.
“I would rather do it
myself because I think my English is good
enough for grammar or spelling or for rearrangement of a sentence. I think I
can do it much quicker and better myself.”
Mukherji says such suggestions obstruct the flow of writing when
you want to write a creative piece. “I think ‘O good Lord’, I didn’t say that,
so why is it saying that? I get very angry and so frankly I don’t like spell or
grammar check by apps on phone or computer. I prefer to do it myself.”
Some well-known apps are Gammarly, ProWritingAid, Linguix, Writer.com,
Beewriter, Scribendi, WhiteSmoke, Sapling, Slick Write, After The Deadline,
Hemmingway, etc.
Grammarly is used for checking
grammar and plagiarism. It offers numerous writing styles, suggestions for
grammar, vocabulary and syntax.
At the same time, Mukherji feels such apps could be useful for people
who have a problem with writing in English or with spellings and so on.
Mukherji thinks these apps are too mechanical and the best way to make
sure that one doesn’t make mistakes in grammar or spelling is to read a lot of
good books so that there is much less likelihood of making any mistakes.
“I have taught for so many years. When I found somebody making too many
spelling mistakes, I would say to him/her ‘I want you to read one chapter of
something very carefully and I will ask you the spellings afterwards.’ I pressed upon them that they have
to read carefully and keep their eyes wide open so that they don't make
spelling mistakes.”
Mukherji says if somebody corrects her grammar, then she would want to
know the reason why he or she corrected it. “And usually it’s not the reason
that convinces me. But I guess
if people need it, they need it, that’s their requirement. I don’t want to say
don’t use them at all. But I wouldn’t and I won’t recommend them to
people either,” Mukherji said.
How reliable are such apps?
ProWritingAid says it
checks grammar, readability and plagiarism-related issues. It offers a detailed
report on all grammar errors, runs a readability analysis, allows you to test
how easy it is to read and understand your draft and provides a thesaurus for
word suggestions.
KV Sridhar (Pops), Global Chief Creative Officer, Nihilent
Hypercollective at Nihilent Limited, feels it is okay to use them if they make your work faster. But when it
comes to professional writing, one has to learn the language from the beginning.
“Technology provides you with
clues to check grammar, spelling, etc. It is far more accepted today in any
word document. We have been using it for a very long time. The predictive
nature of computer intelligence allows you to type even WhatsApp messages with
a bit of prediction. Today 90% of Wikipedia is not done by human beings but by
bots. So technology is helping people. But I am not talking about professional
writers,” said Sridhar.
A lot of content today is written by machine and not by human beings and
so taking the help of technology is accepted now. “Earlier, if you didn’t know
how to form a sentence, or a sentence was grammatically wrong, people used to
curse you and correct it. Today, even in newspapers or spoken English if the
grammar is wrong, people forgive them,” Sridhar says.
Today, even if something is not written in proper English, it is
accepted but earlier it was not the same.
“On Twitter, famous people or celebrities write using auto correct.
Earlier, grammar Nazis used to spot mistakes. It was quite a rage. The old
school people from, say, Hindu and Statesman, who subscribe to the right
language, used to get annoyed by celebrities not writing in the proper
language. It was quite a phenomenon then but later they gave up because in the
ocean of words, which is moving so quickly, nobody can hold anything.”
All these apps, including Microsoft Word, give spell check, grammar, and
predictive writing indication, which help you do your job a little better and
quicker, Sridhar explained. He thinks it’s far more advisable to run a grammar
and spell check in a piece of content or article than going through it alphabet
by alphabet, word by word or sentence by sentence as we are living in a LIVE
world.
“In a way you can call it
laziness or incompetence. But on
the other side it is agility, convenience and precision. You may make mistakes
but computers don’t. Often if you don’t set the language, whether it is British
English or American English you may face inconsistency in the way you spell or
frame sentences or use certain words. But if you set all your parameters right
and take the help of any of these tools, its fine for me. It is okay to take
the help of technology to do anything better. It is always a good thing,” said
Sridhar.
But to learn the language and to frame sentences to express your ideas
better; you have to learn it from the beginning, from school.
“If you are a professional writer, you have to be extra cautious and
should know the language well. Learn
it properly, and then take the help of technology because the pace at
which you are working today is much faster then what it used to be 20 or 30
years ago,” added Sridhar.
Elaborating on his argument, Sridhar said that today if a person doesn’t
respond on WhatsApp, you wonder what happened and within two seconds you move
on. It is the same with Twitter, where three minutes is the time to respond. If
a company or brand doesn’t respond within three minutes, a brand or company is
not excused.
Choice of words on the computer will be a little advanced and
appropriate words help you to express your thoughts better or the personality
of your writing style. And this is where technology helps. “You just need to
use it wisely and judiciously,” Sridhar says.
Sridhar says human voice is coming in a big way and who knows tomorrow
spoken English would be converted into proper English by the computer and sent
across, which is fine because you need to express your thoughts.
Thoughts and ideas are far more important than the play of words, he
says. “Responding quicker is far more important than writing proper English. If
auto correct can correct two or three things, it is fine. Running a grammar
check before sending a mail to someone in a split second is far more
appreciative than not sending or sending it the next day,” Sridhar said.
Linguix is said to be an AI-based
writing assistant and a grammar checker tool that helps you to check real-time
errors. It provides alerts and recommendations for grammar and punctuation. It
allows you to copy-paste your existing text and provides alternative words and
phrases and spelling corrections. It eliminates poor phrase and sentence
structures and typos.
Benita Sen, a
journalist, editor, children's author and creative writing teacher, feels
such apps are shortcuts. “If you want to learn the grammar, is there any
shortcut to learning the rules and then using them? I doubt that. Unless you
learn correct usage, you will be app-dependent for far longer than you need to
be. I advise my students to read books on grammar. My favourite is, Eats Shoots
and Leaves.”
But don’t these suggestions hamper the spontaneity of a writer? “It would
not hamper the flow of thoughts if you decide to write come what may, and then
put the completed piece through the checker,” added Sen.
If you are bound to use some app, do some research about its veracity.
“I would do some background research if I have to fall back on an app. I have
been teaching creative writing to students in India and abroad. I would not
suggest that my students trust any app blindly. If the app makes a suggestion,
look up the context of the suggestion before incorporating it. Nuances may be
lost if we leave all our writing to AI,” added Sen.
The Writer.com grammar
corrector tool claims it helps keep content quality consistent by providing
brand-specific feedback. It enables you to build a custom style guide. You can
check the content according to your company’s style guide and enable you to
turn on/off different types of writing suggestions.
These artificial intelligence-based grammar-checking apps come in handy
in finding missing articles or punctuations or errors but one should never be
over-dependent on them — definitely not to learn and improve
English or grammar, feels Nilutpal Thakur, a senior
journalist.
Many such apps make unnecessary suggestions, and so it’s not good to
follow them blindly, he says.
“These are not learning tools, they are reviewers. Anyway, a review
suggested may or may not be always correct because they are based on algorithms
and artificial intelligence. They do not recognise complex sentences and those
with multiple clauses. They may suggest alternative sentences and words that
may have different, nuanced meanings,” Thakur added.
Many experts
explained that people who use these apps do not actually get to the bottom of
why artificial intelligence may have suggested a change. So they tend to
blindly correct a sentence without understanding their mistake and forget about
it the next moment. And this is not helpful because they are not learning from
their mistakes.
So if you want to be a better writer in English, learn the language from
the beginning and read more because no app can help you much, besides finding
errors here or a typo there.
The writer is an independent journalist and video content creator based
in Delhi-NCR. Runs a YouTube channel Think Positive: Live Healthy.
