A college writing center is an on-campus educational institution that offers help to students who may be struggling with their writing assignments, or who simply need an additional pair of eyes when penning essays, term papers, discussion posts, creative writing, and other writing projects. The writing center is a valuable tool available to students who spend too much time trying to write, or haven’t honed the ability to do so, and desire the opportunity to strengthen their writing and time management skills. These centers not only help a student tackle their current writing projects, they can help set the student up for writing success for the rest of their college and adult lives.
Writing centers sound great, right? So what’s the problem? The problem is that the Covid-19 pandemic has closed a lot of these centers on school campuses this year.
So what’s an online-based college student who is looking to improve their writing skills to do? You’ll probably want to employ the help of an online writing service. And no, we’re not talking about the type of forbidden service that one might use to hire someone else to write the entire paper (don’t get any ideas, this is not an honest or even dependable thing to do, you have no idea what you’re going to receive). We’re talking about a service that teaches you the tools and tricks you need so that one day you won’t have to ask for help when assigned a new writing project. Tools that could make you SO good at writing…. who knows…. you may even ENJOY working on all of those papers! Maybe? Too far?
Regardless, if you need a little writing help this year, check out these four writing services students are currently using and loving:
Chegg Writing Tutor
Chegg’s Writing Tutor database, available 24 hours a day, allows you to view tutor bios and hand-select the tutor that you feel best fits your needs. Work one-on-one with your tutor on your creative writing, thesis statements, research papers and more, or work with them to simply improve your basic writing. Chegg Writing is also available if you’d like to quickly check your paper for plagiarizing and paraphrasing mistakes and grammatical errors.
Grammarly
Grammarly is the AI editor gainfully employed human editors are afraid of. It can correct grammar, spelling mistakes, punctuation, detect plagiarism, help with tone, word choices, and readability – suggesting better ways of phrasing or expressing something. And it can do all of this in real-time, while you are connected to a compatible website or service such as Gmail, Google Docs, Outlook, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and more. So when your Microsoft Word’s spell check isn’t cutting it, try copying and pasting your work into a Google Doc and let Grammarly work some extra magic on it.
Scrivener
Scrivener is a (Mac only) writing program that helps organize notes, files, quotes, links, and other documents you amass when researching a topic, into one central place. This is for the student who (when they’re writing a paper) makes a complete mess of their screen and accidentally closes out and loses important documents because they have 10 to 20 different Word and Text Edit windows open or minimized on their dock at once. Scrivener will not only help you stay organized, but it will also save you a ton of time wading through documents when you’re trying to get any kind of writing work done.
GeeklyHub
GeeklyHub is a student productivity platform that you can turn to when you need a tutor (or in this case, a Geek) and have a writing project to tackle, but you’re not quite sure where to start. Your Geek can help direct you to the resources you need, help prepare your notes, brainstorm, and help you master your topic – all things necessary to give you the confidence necessary to get the ball rolling on your writing assignment. Just type in the task you’re looking for help on, choose your course and GeeklyHub will find you your very own Geek to get started.
