Online Writing Lab
The Smarthinking Online Writing Lab is designed to assist secondary, post-secondary, and graduate students become stronger writers. Students receive a detailed, personalized critique of any written assignment, such as an essay, paragraph, report, or creative work. When applicable, students can select specialists such as ESL, Technical Writing, or Creative Writing experts. Students can submit writing 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Smarthinking also offers two options for job applicants and students in career writing classes seeking more detailed assistance with résumés, cover letters, writing samples, personal statements and other career-related writing needs. Like our standard essay service, our Career Writing service focuses feedback on helping job applicants and students produce career writing pieces that will have a high impact in today’s job market. We offer a separate submission option under “Résumé or Cover Letter” where job applicants and students can receive more detailed feedback on Purpose/Focus, Content Development, Organization, Grammar & Mechanics, Sentence Structure, and Word Choice from writing tutors trained in the most up-to-date techniques. As with all critiques, tutors will not edit the writing piece, but will provide personalized feedback in order to improve the writing for the applicable audience.
The Critique Process:
Each critique includes the writing tutor’s comments inserted within the student assignment and a Response Form detailing additional feedback. Smarthinking writing tutors address students’ writing issues, targeting higher-order issues (such as content and thesis development) as well as lower-order concerns (such as grammar and mechanics). They do not edit or correct student work. By expanding students’ understanding of good writing techniques, our tutors help students become better writers.
About Smarthinking Tutors:
Smarthinking writing tutors have advanced degrees in composition and rhetoric, literature, creative writing, and other relevant fields within the humanities. They are trained to respond to writing submissions in a range of academic subjects (e.g. lab reports, business plans, literary analyses, writing across the curriculum) and at a range of academic levels (from developmental writers to graduate students). Specifically, Smarthinking-Certified Tutors review students' writing in the following general academic areas at the secondary through graduate levels, unless otherwise indicated: Composition; Literature; English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL); Creative Writing; AP English (high school); English Language Arts (high school); Writing-Intensive Courses Across the Curriculum (to include writing projects for classes in the humanities, sciences, and business, and to include thesis and dissertation projects in the humanities and business), as well as student assessment.
Students can also receive a detailed critique of their practice SAT essay. The critique identifies an essay's strengths, notes its weaknesses, and provides a sample score.
Sample reviews can be found on the left.