Adam Jellal
April 13, 2026
Writing academic essays in English when it isn't your first language is genuinely hard. The grammar rules are one thing — verb tenses, articles, prepositions — but academic English also has specific register conventions, sentence structures, and vocabulary patterns that aren't obvious from classroom instruction alone.
Grammar checkers help. But most were built primarily for native English speakers, and their suggestions don't always account for the specific error patterns of writers whose first language is French, Arabic, Mandarin, Korean, or Portuguese. This guide is specifically for international and ESL students — what grammar checkers do differently for you, and which ones are worth using in 2025.
Native English speakers make grammatical errors too — but the errors are different. An ESL writer from a Romance language background might have issues with article use ("the" vs. "a" vs. no article), since many languages don't have a direct equivalent. A Chinese or Japanese first-language writer might struggle with verb tense consistency or subject-verb agreement, since these are marked differently in their native languages. An Arabic speaker may find English sentence order (especially for questions and negatives) consistently tricky.
A grammar checker that doesn't understand these patterns will either over-flag natural non-native phrasing or miss the specific types of errors that ESL writers are most likely to make. The best tools for ESL students do three things:
Correct technical errors — the standard grammar, spelling, punctuation.
Improve naturalness — flag phrasing that's grammatically correct but sounds unidiomatic in academic English, and suggest more natural alternatives.
Support the native language — if you draft notes, outlines, or rough ideas in your first language and then translate to English, a tool that handles both languages saves time and reduces errors in the translation step.
Understanding your most likely error patterns helps you use grammar checkers more effectively — you can focus on the suggestions most relevant to your background.
Article errors (a/an/the) — among the most common errors for speakers of languages without articles (Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, most Slavic languages). Grammar checkers vary in how accurately they detect article errors.
Preposition misuse — preposition choice in English is often idiomatic rather than logical ("interested in" not "interested about"), and errors are common across nearly all language backgrounds.
Verb tense consistency — academic writing requires careful tense management (present tense for general truths and literary analysis; past tense for research findings; present perfect for recent developments). Inconsistency is a common ESL issue.
Subject-verb agreement — particularly when the subject is complex ("The causes of climate change are...").
Sentence-level errors — run-on sentences, sentence fragments, comma splices. These appear across all backgrounds but are particularly common when writers are translating structures that work differently in their native language.
Formal register — using informal vocabulary or contractions in academic writing ("can't" instead of "cannot," "a lot" instead of "considerably").
Typely's Grammar Checker supports 13 languages: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Finnish. This is the widest language coverage of any tool in this comparison — and it's directly relevant for international students.
What this means practically: if you're a Korean student who writes rough notes in Korean before translating to English for your essay, you can use Typely in both languages within the same workflow. If you're a French student at an English-speaking university, you can switch between languages without leaving the platform.
For ESL students in particular, Typely's Grammar Checker also catches the register issues that matter for academic writing — flagging informal phrasing, suggesting more appropriate academic vocabulary, and identifying where sentence structure sounds natural vs. awkward in English academic contexts.
The integration with Typely's full writing toolkit is an advantage specific to ESL students: you can paraphrase awkward passages with the Paraphrasing Tool, check AI detection scores, and run a plagiarism check, all without switching platforms. This matters when you're working in a second language and already managing cognitive load.
Best for: international students writing in English as a second or third language, students who work in multiple languages, and any ESL student who wants grammar checking as part of a complete writing workflow.
Grammarly is the most widely used grammar checker among students globally, and its integration footprint is unmatched: Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Gmail, browsers, and mobile apps. For international students whose universities require submission through Google Classroom or Turnitin via Word, Grammarly's in-environment suggestions mean you fix errors while you write — rather than copying text into a separate tool.
Grammarly's free plan handles the core grammar and spelling corrections well. For ESL students specifically, the paid Pro plan adds clarity and style suggestions that flag unidiomatic phrasing — this is particularly useful for students whose technical grammar is correct but whose writing sounds non-native in register or word choice.
Multiple international students describe Grammarly explicitly as a learning tool, not just a correction tool — the explanations of why something is wrong help you internalize English grammar patterns over time rather than just accepting suggestions automatically.
Language support on Grammarly is more limited than Typely: primarily English, with real-time support in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian. Students from other language backgrounds are using Grammarly in English-only mode.
Best for: ESL students who primarily work in Google Docs or Microsoft Word and want corrections in real time as they write.
QuillBot's Grammar Checker is free, requires no account, and supports English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Swiss German, and Dutch. In independent accuracy testing, it identified 20/20 errors in a test passage (vs. 11/20 for Grammarly's checker in the same test), and performs particularly well on British English — relevant for students at UK and Australian universities.
The Grammar Checker's integration with QuillBot's Paraphraser is useful for ESL students who find themselves grammatically corrected on a sentence but still unhappy with how it reads. The "Paraphrase Text" button passes the corrected sentence to the Paraphraser, where you can explore alternative phrasings that sound more natural.
For ESL students on a tight budget, QuillBot's free Grammar Checker is a strong starting point. The limitation for students outside the supported languages (Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Hindi, etc.) is that it doesn't support those languages directly.
Best for: European-background ESL students who need a strong free grammar checker with no word limits.
JustDone's Grammar Checker works well for academic English specifically — it's part of a toolkit built around academic writing tasks, and the register awareness is appropriate for essays and research papers. For ESL students using JustDone primarily for AI humanizing or plagiarism checking, the Grammar Checker adds without requiring a platform switch.
Best for: ESL students already using JustDone's other tools who want to stay in one platform.
When choosing a tool, these specific features matter more for ESL students than for native writers:
Explanation mode — tools that explain why something is wrong, not just what to change. This builds your English grammar knowledge over time rather than just producing correct outputs. Grammarly is particularly good at explanations.
Register and tone feedback — tools that flag informal phrasing or suggest more academic vocabulary for formal writing. Both Typely and Grammarly (Pro) handle this well.
Article and preposition checking — some tools handle these better than others. If article use is your primary challenge, test your chosen tool specifically on passages with article errors before committing to it.
Native language support — if you need to work in your first language at any point in your workflow, Typely's 13-language support is the most practical option.
Naturalness vs. technicality — some grammar checkers focus on technical correctness (is this grammatically right?). Better tools for ESL students also flag naturalness (is this how academic English actually sounds?). The distinction matters for writing that reads as competent vs. writing that reads as fluent.
Don't auto-accept every suggestion. Read each suggestion and understand why it's being made. If you don't understand the reason, look it up. This is how grammar checking becomes grammar learning.
Run two passes. A first pass for technical errors (grammar, spelling, punctuation). A second pass for clarity and style (register, naturalness, sentence length). These are different cognitive tasks and work better separated.
Use the paraphrasing tool on passages that feel awkward. If a paragraph is grammatically correct but still doesn't sound right to you, a paraphrasing tool can suggest alternative structures. Typely's Paraphrasing Tool is built for this use case.
Compare the suggested version to your original. Before accepting a rewrite, verify that the meaning is preserved. Grammar checkers occasionally change meaning in the process of fixing grammar — particularly with complex sentences.
Use the tool as a learning aid, not just a fixer. Track which types of errors you make repeatedly. If you're consistently flagged on article use, spend 15 minutes studying English article rules. Grammar checkers tell you where the problems are; understanding why they're problems is how you improve over time.
Typely's Grammar Checker is available in 13 languages and free at usetypely.com, alongside the full academic writing toolkit.
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