Using Write & Improve to practise writing

Hi, there.

In today’s video,

I’ll give you a tip on a very nice platform

to practise writing.

Maybe in the past few months

you’ve been writing more in English,

for your job or communicating

with friends through online messaging platforms.

Writing is a wonderful tool to let the mind be creative

and also to talk about our feelings,

like creating a story or keeping a journal.

But since we are all at home,

how do we know if what we’re writing is correct?

If you’re writing on a piece of paper

and your teacher has no way of receiving it to correct

and give you feedback on it,

you’ll probably have a lot

of written text but have no way of receiving feedback on it,

or it will take a long time to do so.

So I’m going to show you Cambridge’s platform

called Write and Improve.

The link is in the video description below.

It’s a free

and user-friendly platform full of wonderful features.

And you know what they say, practise makes perfect,

so the more you practise writing,

the better you’ll be at it.

The registration is quite simple.

You create a username and a password.

You can even sign in with your Facebook account.

After you’ve signed in,

there are different categories to choose tasks from,

such as beginner, intermediate and advanced.

There’s also a business category and a Just for Fun.

When you choose the category,

a variety of different tasks will appear.

When you click on it,

you read the assignment and instructions to write your text,

such as a word count to stick to.

During the writing, you can see the word count,

and if you’d like you can time yourself to see

how long you take to finish.

This is important for people

who are practising for proficiency exams.

When you’ve finished writing,

you click on check and get instant feedback

on your writing,

like grammar correction and general feedback.

The auto-check also marks the CEFR level your writing is,

and then you have

the opportunity to correct your mistakes

and improve your writing.

After everything is corrected and you check again,

you receive a badge for completing a task.

There’s also a chart that monitors your progress

as you go along,

showing the CEFR level of each writing assignment

on a graph, so you can monitor your progress.

There’s a section specifically designed for preparing

for proficiency exams such as IELTS Academic,

IELTS General Training and B2 First.

In this section,

you can find tasks very similar to the ones on the exams,

and with time-limit indications.

When you’re preparing for an exam,

it’s very important to know what kinds of assignments

will be on the exam,

so you can practise

and strategise how to make a good text

within the time limit.

The feedback you receive is instant,

with many suggestions on what can be better structured

or what needs to be changed to improve the writing.

For the exam practise section,

it gives a band score similar to the one given

on the actual exam,

making it easier to know

how well you are doing and how much you need to improve.

So now that you know how Write and Improve works,

how about giving it a try and writing your very first text.

If you’re a teacher,

you can also use the platform with your students,

creating your own assignments.

Just check out the article on the Better Learning blog

in the Supporting Every Teacher section.

The link is also in the description

of the video below.

And if you do try out the platform,

come back here and tell me in the comments section

what you thought of it.

Don’t forget to like this video and share it with your friends,

your students, anybody

who needs help or an incentive to write.

I hope you stay safe, and I’ll see you soon.

Bye.