The Effectiveness of Using Grammarly in the Writing Process

Abstract

In the 21st century era, the use of automated writing evaluation programs is becoming increasingly popular due to recent technological advancements. Among them, Grammarly stands out as one of the most popular computer programs that students tend to frequently use during the writing process. Therefore, the current research attempts to investigate the effectiveness of using Grammarly software in the writing process, and to unveil EFL teachers’ attitudes towards the matter at hand. Hence, it has been hypothesized that the use of Grammarly software to correct writing mistakes would have either a positive or a negative impact on the quality of EFL students’ academic writing. In order to achieve the research objectives and test the research hypotheses, a mixed method has been adopted by incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data-gathering tools. In essence, a collection of one-hundred and three (103) final versions of written essays of third-year students of English has been collected and analyzed by Grammarly. In addition, a written essay has been randomly chosen and rewritten with the assistance of the software. Furthermore, a survey questionnaire has been distributed to thirty-seven (37) teachers of English at the Department of Letters and English Language at the University of 08 Mai 1945 Guelma in order to figure out their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of Grammarly in the writing process. Consequently, the findings revealed that when Grammarly is used to check final products, it yields favourable outcomes in correcting surface-level errors, while it exhibits limitations in addressing deeper-level writing errors such as content and organization; however, it can work better if it is used synchronously while composing due to the cyclical nature of the writing activity.Therefore, some practical recommendations were proposed to optimize the utilization of Grammarly software in the process of teaching and learning.