Change your ways of writing traditional papers with LitLift tool where students can enhance their creativity and practice their writing skills at the same time.
What is it?
LitLift is a writing software where one can write an online novel or story for free. With LitLift, you can start writing as a hobby or start a bestseller. This software helps you to write, organize, store and share your stories (if you want so). The goal of the website is to promote writing and have people find a passion in writing.
How does it work?
First, you will have to create an account by clicking on the sign up now icon and to fill in the required information or you can sign in with Facebook, Twitter and Google+. After you created your account, you can start writing. To write a book, just click on the “new book” icon on the right upper corner. You will have to give your book a title and a description in order to get started. Then, you will have the opportunity to add or to remove chapters, scenes, characters, settings and items. To add a chapter, you just have to click on your book(s) and click on the chapter icon and add one. You will have to give a name and a description of your chapter. To create a scene, you will have to add a name to it, a date and time and a body. To create a character, you have to tell his or her name, if he or she has a major or minor role in the novel or the story and a description of the character. You can add a random quirk or a random trait to your character. There are included features that you can modify or eliminate such as appearance, background, hobbies, mannerisms, education, occupation, family, ancestry, friends, questions and interviews. You can also create a random character by clicking on the icon “generate a random character” on the upper right corner. To add a setting to your story, you just have to say where it takes place and a description of it. Finally, to add items to your book or story, you just have to name it and give a description of it.
With LitLift, teachers can get their students involved in many different ways. Teachers can ask students to write a story about anything they want or about a specific topic related to something they saw in class. Students could also show it to the class and present it when it is completed. Students could peer-review their classmates’ stories and give and receive feedback on their work to improve their writing skill. Instead of using Microsoft Word to write a text, using a platform like LitLift may play a role in students’ motivation since it is specifically made for writing texts and story. Writing a story is a task that can be done individually, but also in teams. With LiftLit, one student could be responsible to write about characters, another one about scenes, etc. or they could all brainstorm together and write everything as a group. This will enhance group work and we all know that two or more heads are better than one.
My opinion as an ESL teacher
I strongly believe that having students write a story or a book is an awesome way to have them enhance their creativity and practice their C3. What I really enjoyed about this website is the endless possibilities to add as many characteristics as you want for your characters. I really like the character traits generator, which is really helpful for students who lack inspiration. You can organize everything very well with this platform from scenes to chapters as stated in the writerholic blog. Unfortunately, one problem, as mentioned in the fifth dimension blog, is that you cannot add characters from previous books in a new book. For example, if your book has 40 characters and you decide to write the following of the first book, you will have to write down each character again. This is a complete waste of time and it becomes a major problem when you write several books with all the same characters. Furthermore, the website, in general, is pretty basic. It did not attract my eyes and I thought it did not look very modern and appropriate for students nowadays. However, overall I think the website is great and is pretty complete for students who want to get more involved in writing. This software would be appropriate and would be of a great use in ESL classrooms.
dorothygrenier 