A Preliminary Report on a New Grammar Checker to Help Students of English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Whereas many pre-intermediate and intermediate level students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) might benefit from receiving detailed feedback on mistakes in their written compositions, there are obvious practical limits to the amount of corrective feedback that teachers in schools and universities can provide. This article briefly describes the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia’s computerized grammar checker for pre-intermediate and intermediate level Spanish mother-tongue students of EFL. The main part of the article details how a student, working with the grammar checker and independently from teachers, detected and corrected mistakes in her own composition. In the light of this and other trials it was decided to publish the Grammar Checker. The trials also showed how the Grammar Checker can be improved and developed. Brief reference is made to its possible impact on the ways in which foreign languages are taught and learnt.

Keywords

correction EFL errors Grammar Checker pre-intermediate intermediate mistakes

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bruyèl Olmedo, A. (2003) The Application of Contrastive Analysis, Error analysis and Computer Learner Corpus to the Development of Text Analysis Software for Foreign Language Teaching: An evaluation of the UNED On-line Grammar Checker. UNED: Madrid . (Unpublished manuscript)

Edge, J. (1989) Mistakes and Correction. London: Longman .

Garcia-Heras Muñoz, A. (2003) ‘Fundamentacion Teórica de la Construcción de un Minicorpus de Errores Comunes Cometidos por Alumnos de Segundo Ciclo de E.S.O y Bachillerato en el Aprendizaje del Inglés como Lengua Extranjera para el Desarrollo de un Programa InformÁtico de Corrección Gramatical’. Phd thesis. UNED: Madrid.

Jacobs, G. and Rodgers, C. (1999) ‘Treacherous Allies: Foreign Language Grammar Checkers’ . CALICO Journal 16(4): 509-529 .

Lawley, J. (1999) ‘A New Computer-Mediated Writing Aid for Spanish students of English as a Foreign Language’, in P.Faber , W. Gewehr , M.Jimenez and A.J. Peck (eds) English Language Teacher Education in Europe. Sonderdruck: Peter Lang .

Lennon, P. (1991) ‘Error: Some Problems of Definition, Identification and Distinction’ . Applied Linguistics 12(2): 180-196 .

Pennington, M. (1992) ‘Beyond off-the-shelf computer remedies for student writers: Alternatives to canned feedback’ . System 20(4): 423-437 .

Rodríguez Aguado, J. I. , Villoria Díez, B.E. and Paredes Arranz, F. J. (1997) Las Redacciones en Lengua Extranjera en Bachillerato y COU: Investigación Pedagógica. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid .

Sinclair, J. (1991) Corpus, Concordance and Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press .

10.

Tschichold, C. (1999a) ‘Intelligent Grammar Checking for CALL’ . ReCALL 11 (Special issue, May): 5-11 .

11.

Tschichold, C. (1999b) ‘Grammar Checking for CALL: Strategies for improving foreign language grammar checkers’, in K. Cameron (ed.) CALL: Media, Design and Applications. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger .

12.

Tschichold, C. (2003) ‘Lexically Driven Error Detection and Correction’ . CALICO Journal 20(3): 549-559 .