System requirements

• Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
• Microsoft Word XP/2003/2007/2010
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or above
• Active Internet connection

Mark My Words is a Microsoft Word toolbar that helps an instructor to provide useful feedback on students' written assignments.

Mark My Words enables teachers to insert comments in students' written assignments. Teachers insert ‘resource-rich’ comments as feedback, without having to rewrite students’ texts. These comments automatically direct students to detailed online explanations, lookup tools, etc. This encourages students to proofread and to write multiple drafts before submitting work, and to take an independent discovery-based approach to learning: the students, rather than their teachers, are made responsible for identifying problems and finding resources appropriate for specific language problems.

Features

• Instructors can provide detailed feedback on all aspects of written work by inserting brief pre-written (and customizable) comments linked to detailed web-based explanations, interactive tutorials, references, etc. Comments are automatically liked to:
  • over a thousand pages of comprehensive explanations of common errors and interactive quizzes;
  • a dictionary and encyclopedia;
  • a Google or Google News search by country,
  • Word Neighbors (a type of concordancer) and
  • JustTheWord (another concordancer).
• Put your mouse cursor before, over or after any word and right-click and right-click for comments based on the part of speech of the word.
• The software generates a summary of all positive and negative comments you have embedded in the student's assignment.
• The software is customizable so that instructors of any subject can insert comments in any language and Web links relevant to any subject.
  

Note: this software is much more useful if students, during the writing process, are encouraged to use the resources available from the Check My Words toolbar.

You can download handouts describing Mark My Words here (PDF document).