October 31, 2016

Of course, you want to better writing and it would certainly be useful if you could learn more effectively so that you can actually stay ahead of everything that you’re supposed to do. In the past, that just meant more sweat and trying. Today, that’s no longer the case.

Instead, the internet is full of fantastic and less so tools that you can use to enhance your ability to write, read and learn. Often the problem is being able to separate the wheat from the chaff (who has got time for that?). For that reason, I thought I would spend a bit of time pointing out which tools I as a writer have used to get ahead. Then you can apply those in your student life and survive that first year (and the years after) in college.

Sound good? Let’s get started.

Hemingway app

One of the biggest problems that you’ve got when you’re writing is knowing when something you’ve written is hard to understand. After all, it makes perfect sense in your mind! For those moments, there’s the Hemingway app. Here you just plug in the text you’ve got and it will point out sentences that run on too long, overuse of adjectives and places where you can make your content easier to understand.

The greatest thing? In the process of using it you become ever more aware of where you’re using long sentences and complex structures. In this way, you start internalizing the lesson the app teaches. Soon you won’t even need it anymore.

And the second greatest thing about this app is that it’s free!

Stay Focusd

One of the biggest problems of being a student is staying away from all the distractions. This is particularly true when you’re working online, where there are just so many sites out there that want your attention!

The result is that we often end up shooting back and forth from one page to the next. One moment we’re learning, the next we’re talking to friends. That’s not effective. Multitasking isn’t actually good for us. We should singletask instead.

For that reason, installing something like stay focusd is such a great idea. This program will restrict your use of particular websites so that you can focus on actually getting the work that you’re supposed to do done – like studying.

Writepls

Writing isn’t something innate. Instead, it’s a skill that you’ll get better at with practice. The problem for many people is how to get that practice. Well, I’m here to tell you ‘there’s an app for that’.

Writepls calls on you to write every day. If it did that, however, it wouldn’t be much more useful than your mom (not that she’s not useful, just in the regard of pestering you to work). Instead, Writepls also provides you with fantastic ideas about what to write about.

In that way, you’ll find some kind of interesting topic that you actually want to write about every day. Keep that up for a while and you’ll have a writing habit. And that’s the first step to becoming an effective writer.

Bestessay.education

Another problem with writing is that you don’t always know when you’re getting better. Many people end up plateauing because they don’t know what to enhance and how to get better. The best way around that is to get somebody to judge your work, edit what you’re saying and give you insights into what you’re wrong.

Bestessay.education can do that for you. They’ve actually got human editors on standby who can take your text and make it better. And in that way, you’ll be able to compare what they wrote with what you’ve managed to put on paper and understand what you can do the next time to do it better.

Mind Genius

Sometimes what you need to really get to grips with an idea, whether you’re trying to learn it or write about it, is visual aids. One of the best ways I’ve found to do that is through mind mapping. This allows you to see what ideas are nested in where, how you’re ideas are lacking and not worked out enough and a great deal more.

If you’re going to go for a mind mapping tool you can certainly do worse than Mind Genius. It will give you the tools you need to make for some very pretty mind maps that you can then tweak and adjust and your own learning and writing enhances and improves.

Grammarly

Grammar isn’t easy. For that reason, it’s always useful to have some tool pointing out where you might be making a mistake. Grammarly is that tool. It spots far more mistakes than word does and gives you a good accounting of why it’s wrong. In this way you don’t just fix the mistake, but also come to understand why it was a mistake in the first place.

The best part? In the basic function it’s free and installs right into word.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t always agree with the software, but what it points out is always interesting to think about and the best way to get better at what we do is to think about what we might be doing wrong, don’t you agree?

Last words

In terms of tools, we’re truly living in a golden age. It’s just amazing what is out there and what is possible. In fact, I’d like to think that I’ve only just scratched the surface with the tools here. I mean, there are plenty more to think of; tools that have revolutionized learning and writing.

So all I can say is always be on the lookout for new stuff. Try it out for a few days. See what you think. If you don’t like it, get rid of it. If you do, let me know about it. For, even though I’m no longer in college, I’m always keen to enhance both my writing and my learning. In fact, I’d like to think that’s a never ending quest that will continue until the day I die.