By Jennifer Broflowski
While studying can mean hours spent between the bookshelves of your college library, it does not have to be that boring. No matter the obstacles, current technologies offer you a continuously expanding list of supportive tools and resources. Not too many students, though, know how to optimize for the most successful semester ever — and actually, enjoy it.
Fortunately, there are numerous websites beyond the ones you have already heard of; and some of them are designed purely to make your life easier and more fun. But how do you know which of the sources available online truly work and which ones are just a waste of time?
We went ahead and completed the hardest part for you – we selected the five best online services helpful for every scholar.
Grammarly
This online service is designed to support clear and effective communication, along with clean and mistake-free writing. Grammarly is focused on supporting users’ grammar and avoiding any type of misspellings and typos. Up to the date, more than 20 million people use this service every day.
Grammarly uses cutting-edge technology, which enables its accurate performance across multiple platforms and devices. Whether you use them as a web browser extension or as standalone software, powerful algorithms of Grammarly’s AI-powered products flag potential issues in the text and suggest context-specific corrections of any type of mistakes.
Premium features go beyond the grammar and provide you with vocabulary enhancement and citation suggestions and automatically detect plagiarism in your text. It also automatically detects any punctuation and word choice mistakes in your writing, so this is an absolutely must-use writing assistant for every student. With this amazing proofreading tool, you can create, edit, and deliver high-quality texts whenever the need arises.
The Purdue Online Writing Lab
The Purdue Online Writing Lab, also known as the OWL, is another one of the best online resources to find some useful advice and practical guides on developing your writer’s skills. The Owl houses more than 200 resources on writing, grammar, and style guides instructional materials.
Scholars regularly need some online academic advice on a wide range of assignment-related issues. As shown in the edusson review of the issue, most students find it extremely hard to pick reliable advisory academic services while needing them the most. In case you choose an educational platform administered by Purdue University, no worries should be left for you. Be sure that every word on their website is checked twice before getting published.
In addition to some general writing advice, the OWL provides you with comprehensive guides for every formatting style in academic writing. This writing lab also offers a piece of great advice about how to avoid plagiarism and use online reference materials and services properly.
Quizlet
This online learning community helps you practice and master anything you want. When it comes to studies, Quizlet takes a bit different path than other educational platforms. Since it enables both students and tutors to easily share studying materials on absolutely different subjects, Quizlet can be a great option when you are looking for a resource to understand the key points from a specific class.
Topics may vary from quick classes on common topics such as “English idiom of the day” to in-depth examinations like “Structures of the Heart.” You can use other people’s study sets together with some expert-created study guides to learn anything in a more fun and efficient way.
According to the data provided on Quizlet.com, more than 50 million users choose Quizlet among other educational platforms every month. The considerable number of addicted users may be explained by a user-centered approach to this service. Its simple-to-use-and-navigate user interface makes self-studies and exam preparations easier than ever before and is extremely popular among language learners.
Coursera
Coursera is an open platform for online learners from any corner of the world. Its mission is to provide access to the world’s best education for anyone, anywhere. Since its foundation by two Stanford computer science professors in 2002, Coursera has expanded to engage top instructors from 190 world-class universities and enterprises.
So far, more than 40 million learners have taken advantage of having access to courses from educators like Yale, IBM, Google, and many others. To get started with more than 3,600 courses available on the website, you just need to sign up and choose the course that meets your needs. Coursera courses include on-demand video lectures, home assignments, and learning community discussion forums.
There are also some paid courses on the website. Most of them last from four to six weeks and will cost you about $39. If you choose this learning option, at the end of the course, you earn an electronic certificate you can share with LinkedIn or attach to your CV.
Thesaurus.com
Last but definitely not least is a tool that every college student needs to use to improve his/her writing — an easy-to-use digital thesaurus coupled with an online dictionary. Both of these are great assistants in terms of improving your paper with useful synonym suggestions or some precise words due to the researched topic. In most cases, students tend to have some difficulties with both.
To help you find your way out, we recommend you visit Thesaurus.com, one of the most known and trusted online sources. Reaching over 70 million users every month, the website has also proved to be the world’s leading online thesaurus. Given these numbers, it becomes obvious that this efficient tool can help you by calling up a familiar word that is out of reach whenever you need it.
But you should keep in mind that English grammar can play some tricky games, even with the experienced learners with substantial writing experience. The best idea would be to make sure that the word used in your writing means what you have planned. Therefore, you should also use a trusted dictionary to review the meaning of specific words and idioms due to the context.
Conclusion
We all know that college years are sometimes hard to survive even for the most addicted students. Being armed with the best digital tools can make a real difference in keeping your college life on track. No matter how tricky it might seem, using the resources listed above, you can improve your writing skills and get the most out of any academic challenge you are going to encounter.
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