For those who been reading my articles, there is no secret that English is not my first language. As many people who are writing on non-native language I spend a lot of time trying to figure out if the sentence I just wrote is correct and properly used.  This is also very important during job search time as you want your resume, cover letter all communication emails to be as clean and well written as possible.

That’s why I was very excited to learn about new experimental project by Microsoft Research called ESL Assistant (http://eslassistant.com).  As they state on the website the ESL Assistant is a prototype proofing tool that is being developed by the Microsoft Research with the goal of helping non-native speakers who write English every day around the world. The system uses state-of-the-art statistical tools and large-scale language models to identify possible problems in your writing and to suggest improvements that you can verify using automated searches on the web.

To use it just type some English sentences into the text box. The ESL Assistant will look for possible problems in your writing and indicate them with green squiggles. Then just move your mouse to highlight a suggestion; system will now search the internet to find real examples, so that you can compare the suggestion with what you wrote.

 In addition to the web interface ESL Assistant also have Outlook plug-in, which simply redirecting you to the website  and copying your current message into the query box.

It is a great helper for me, so hope it would help you as well