Cool websites to teach writing

For technology resources teaching, Jennifer Verschoor's blog,  My Technological Journey, is hard to beat.

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.... Nathaniel Hawthorne 

As a language teacher I really find it difficult to motivate my students to start writing in class. The Internet is a resource that complements the dynamics of my class. It is easy to access, up-to-date and immediate source of authentic materials. Since I started introducing technology and using a wiki with Middle school my classes have definitely changed. Please check below the cool sites we have been using this year.

• Writing Fun A MUST for teachers.  This website motivated my students to enhance their writing skills.

• The Writing Site Check this website with a great variety of tech integration ideas.

• iWrite Provides several examples for students to learn how to write effectively.

• Writing Fix Practice Prompt Recommendations.

• Writing Exemplars I make my students search for writing samples created by other students worldwide.

• Interactive Scoring Another website that provides writing samples to use with your students.

via jenverschoor.wordpress.com

Studying on their own or in a self-paced study group, students become their own teachers, although (as a college writing teacher) I've seen enough misguided "feral" and self-administered feedback to recognize the pitfalls. Teaching yourself writing does not eliminate the need for 3rd party feedback.

In my mind, this is a central problem to developing an effective self paced writing program. If you write on your own, outside a group and without a writing buddy, what are your best strategies for getting feedback on your writing? What options are available? 

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How to Help Students Write Better

This (mostly reposted/ re-purposed) article is also cross-posted Blogging English, a companion/ mirror blog of sorts, is for and supports an ESL self study group, which means I don't make a habit of marking student writing. Writing is supposed to be the primary focus, not that anyone there has been doing much of that lately. 


The lessons in this article go to feed back and editing. Does that makes this article irrelevant to self-paced writing. If you want to write better, you must actually write ~ and the more, the better ~ but feedback and revision are necessary. How much and what kind depends on purpose and audience. Still, handling any kind of writing feedback within DIY (do it yourself) structure is proving problematic.


Dr Davis at Teaching College English writes, 

I teach developmental composition. In my class, I require 7 essays and 3 rewrites, with a fourth rewrite as optional. Most of the other faculty require between 4 and 6 essays and between 0 and 3 rewrites. 

When I was much younger I required 14 essays in a 16-week semester.
I would like to encourage my students to write better, while not having to grade quite so many papers. So when I was reading the CHE forum, this caught my attention.