A major challenge faced by international students in the U.S. is studying in English. This article will introduce various practical online learning tools to help international students overcome academic barriers.
For international students, studying in a non-native language is challenging. To assist with learning, many students use online tools, such as AI. Using these tools appropriately can help us overcome academic difficulties. This article will introduce several learning tools most commonly used by international students.
Essential Guideline for Using AI Tools
Many international students use AI to check spelling and grammar, revise writing style, or draft outlines to improve their academic performance, which is acceptable. However, using AI to generate assignments is considered academic misconduct. If discovered, it could lead to expulsion (many schools now have AI detection softwares). Therefore, while using online tools, students should also avoid violating academic ethics.
Writing Assistants
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Grammarly
Grammarly can be used to correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors, while suggesting stylistic improvements. By providing real-time feedback, it can highlight your grammatical and spelling mistakes quickly.
Pros: Highlights each error; allows you to choose whether to accept suggestions; includes a scoring system.
Cons: Limited function; the free version only corrects obvious errors, while advanced features require payment.
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ChatGPT
ChatGPT is currently the most widely used AI among American students. By inputting different commands, it can complete various types of tasks. In addition to correcting grammar, ChatGPT can provide creative ideas, draft outlines, and summarize key points. There are many other potential uses to explore. However, you should use ChatGPT as a tool for organizing ideas and information rather than relying on it to generate finished prose.
One major drawback of ChatGPT is that its writing style is overly formal and its vocabulary is too uniform, which can make it obvious that your work has been processed by AI. However, users can input different prompts to repeatedly revise and achieve the desired effect.
Pros: Versatile; can significantly modify sentence structure and tone; allows adjustment of the extent of modifications.
Cons: Uniform style and vocabulary; does not highlight specific changes, requiring users to check differences themselves.
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Claude
Claude is a versatile tool that helps users with a range of tasks, including answering questions, writing and editing content, and summarizing information. It can engage in natural conversations, generate creative ideas, and assist with problem-solving. Claude performs better than ChatGPT in text composition; however, it comes with a daily usage limit, and unlimited access requires a subscription.
Pros: Excels at maintaining context over longer conversations; better than ChatGPT in text composition.
Cons: Limited accessibility due to daily prompt quotas; fewer third-party integrations.
Academic Research Tools
If you are a graduate student, you may need to write many papers. Some online tools can help you save time searching for literature or improve the quality of your finished work.
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Chatpdf
Chatpdf can help you quickly grasp the main points of a paper. If you upload a paper , it will summarize the main arguments for you. If you do not have time to finish your assigned readings, you can also upload them to quickly understand the key points. Similar tools include Paper Digest, Consensus, and Research Rabbit.
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Copyscape
Copyscape is designed to aid you in upholding academic integrity by detecting unintentional plagiarism. It scans documents for duplicate content across the internet and offers reports on matches, helping to ensure your work is original and well-sourced.
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Zotero
Zotero is an automatic citation generator. When you input information such as the author's name and publication date, it can generate bibliographies in various academic citation formats. With Zotero, you no longer need to manually create citation lists that can span dozens of pages. It can also integrate with web pages and PDF documents, making it extremely convenient.