A Writing Tool that Provides Real-Time Feedback to Students on their Grammar Using Deep Learning

Teaching English writing skills to students from non-English backgrounds is a challenge in undergraduate colleges. Grammar teaching is centered on accuracy of form and rule learning. Grammar pedagogy has received a lot of attention in recent years by researchers. One of the main challenges for first-language English teacher's approach to teaching writing is introducing formulaic approaches to grammar. Another challenge is the amount of time it takes for a teacher to provide feedback to students on their written work. Exceptional rules in the language, cultural and social differences cause a lot of language issues. Applying correct grammar, syntax, spelling, and vocabulary into written work might be challenging especially for international students. In our work, we address both the challenges by proposing a writing tool for students. In our work we use a state- of-the-art deep learning model which helps students identify grammatically incorrect sentences in real time. Our tool not only identifies grammatically incorrect sentences but also gives students an opportunity to correct the sentence themselves. The tool does not correct the sentence for the student. Using this active approach with feedback, students learn by reflecting on their writing and correcting sentences on their own. Our tool identifies incorrect sentences with an accuracy of 80%. We have tried our tool on student essays and have shown that it helps them better understanding grammatical rules of English.