How to deal with students' writing problems? Process-oriented writing support with the digital Writing Aid Dutch

Students at universities and colleges in Belgium as well as abroad often experience difficulties with writing (academic) texts in their native language. Several needs analyses have pointed out that the most frequent writing problems in Dutch are text structure and cohesion, academic style and, to a lesser extent, spelling. Despite many interventions such as extra writing classes or workshops, the transfer between theory and practice often remains problematic. From students’ and teachers’ perspective there is a strong need for effective and process-oriented support. This presentation focuses on the digital Writing Aid Dutch, which makes students aware of typical areas of concern in their texts and provides them with individualized feedback. Writing Aid Dutch is not based on NLP techniques but makes extensive use of databases and analyzes texts using complex queries and string matching techniques. Two effect analyses and user experience studies have revealed that texts improve significantly on use of passives and vague words and on structure and cohesion. Writing Aid Dutch stimulates students’ self-learning process and students perceive it as a very relevant tool. Throughout the design process of the writing aid userfriendliness has been inquired about as well.