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Ashford University | Writelab Video

Hello, and welcome to this tutorial on using WriteLab to revise your essays for English 121 and 122 at Ashford

University.

In addition, you will be asked to utilize WriteLab for a discussion board assignment, either in week 4 or week 3 of

your English course. You can find the link to WriteLab in the specific discussion post assignment or by clicking on

student resources in the left hand navigation pane. When you click on the WriteLab link you'll be taken to the

home page for WriteLab.

The first thing that you will do is click on the button in WriteLab that says New Document. Name the document

whatever you wish to call it. I'll name this draft one.

You can then select, under Assignment, no assignment. Then click the button Create. At this point you will see this

screen. This is the point at which you can upload your assignment. Make sure that the assignment you wish to

upload has been saved either as a docx file in Microsoft Word or a text file. Then click Choose File.

Next, select the file that you wish to revise, then click Open. Your paper is now in the WriteLab system. In order to

begin the revision process click on Get Comments. You will see a window pop open that says, one moment while

we analyze your draft. At that point, you should pull out a sheet of paper or open a new blank Word document so

that you can begin taking notes.

When the next window opens you will see three tabs on the left hand side of your screen. One says New

Comments, another says Addressed Comments, and the last says Not Helpful Comments.

Under the New Comments tab you will see that the comments are focused on key areas like clarity, emphasis,

and concision. You may want to make notes on that sheet of paper now about which areas you seem to have the

most comments for. For the sake of this example essay that's freely available on the internet, clarity and concision

seem to be the problem areas.

Now look in the lower left hand corner of the screen. A comment appears in that lower left hand corner. Your job is

to read the comments and follow the guidance provided there.

In this case, the example asks me to correct the use of passive voice. It's a comment about clarity I'm going to try

to follow the instructions that this comment is providing by clicking on it so that the sentence it's referring to is clear

to me.

In this case, what I need to do is correct the passive voice and I might do that by doing something like this. For

instance, gods and mythical figures sought after virgins like Diana. From there I would need to correct that

sentence. In this case, you may not know some of the terms that are being used. That's OK, that's why we have

this activity.

You may want to take an opportunity, if you look at this comment again on clarity in the lower left hand corner,

you'll notice these buttons here. The check mark, you click on that when you've actually address the comment. If

you can't understand the comment are at all, or you think that the comment is pointing you in the wrong direction

with regards to how you should revise the sentence, you can click on the X, which means not helpful.

But, if you're confused by what the comment is talking about you can also click on this little question mark. When I

click on that question mark, it asks if I would like to see an example. Then a kind of grammar guidebook opens up

and it will go over things like, in this case, the handling the verb to be.

You can also leave feedback on the comment. If there was an area that was particularly unclear to you, then go

ahead and click that button and let them know. In this case, I'm going to select the check mark because I've

addressed the comment. I made a specific change to that sentence. As I do so, notice what happens up here in

the tabs.

When I click on the check mark one of the clarity comments has disappeared. An addressed comment has been

added. The same thing would happen if you click an X on Not Helpful.

As you read the comments, you'll be able to take notes on what areas you feel you need to work on. For instance,

this sample, as I said before, shows that the essay writer needs to work on clarity and concision primarily. But,

when I study the specific suggestions for clarity and concession, I may notice that some kinds of suggestions keep

coming up.

Let's say that all of the comments I go over suggest that I need to work on passive voice. That's something I

should make a note of on that sheet of paper for future reference. The notes you take here are what you would

use to write your discussion board post on WriteLab, so make sure you take good notes. At the end of your

revision you will want zero unaddressed comments under the Unaddressed tab.

If you can't understand the suggestions, the terminology being used, again, I encourage you to try Googling some

of the keywords you see. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean that you don't need to know them, so

use this opportunity to grow your style and grammar skills. In this case, I might search the internet for articles on

passive voice.

At this point I could even click on this button to share my document with an instructor if I wanted to. I could put my

instructor's email address here if I felt like I might want some extra feedback, or if I wanted to know I was going in

the right direction. I could also send it to a friend or a tutor.

At that point, let's say that I want to make sure that I have this finished copy of the paper so that I can share. If I

click Download, a Word document of my revision will be downloaded for me to use and save to my computer.

I hope that this has been a helpful tutorial for you. If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach

out to your instructor. We hope that this is a useful tool and we invite you to give us as much feedback as you can

for it, since this is a kind of tutorial pilot project.

Thanks again, and I hope that you have a great English 121 and 122 experience.