--- Forwarded Message from Jack Burston <[log in to unmask]> ---

>User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.0.0.040405
>Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 10:00:00 +0200
>Subject: Re: #8102.2 French correction
>From: Jack Burston <[log in to unmask]>
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum   
<[log in to unmask]>
>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>

Hi Francoise,

Spell checking in French is a whole lot more difficult than in English since
it cannot be disassociated from grammar checking.  For example, an English
spell checker just has to see whether "small" is in its lexical base; in
French, the checker can't tell whether "petit" is correct unless it also
analyzes the sentence to see what noun it is modifying.

With only one exception that I am aware of, French spell/grammar checkers
are all based on native-speaker grammars, they presuppose that the
underlying grammatical structure of a text is essentially correct and work
from there.  This is why it is so difficult for them to deal with the kind
of errors that our students are likely to throw at them. The one exception
to native-speaker based grammar/spell checkers is Sans Faute (also marketed
under the name of Grammatica).  It was designed specifically to look out for
mistakes like "je cherche pour x", "j'ai parti", etc. so familiar to all of
us. Sans Faute/Grammatica thus has the potential to be more useful with
second-fourth semester language learners.

Whatever grammar/spell checker is selected, students have to be taught to
use it.  Without training, they expect that their French will be corrected
just like their English spelling is, automatically. Students have to learn
to work interactively with a grammar/spell checker to figure out what's
wrong, if anything. The hardest thing to learn to do is to reject a
correction because the checker has made an incorrect analysis, which happens
perhaps 10-20% of the time depending on which checker you are using and the
linguistic competence of the student.  Without training, students typically
go from expecting all their mistakes to be automatically corrected to
thinking that everything the checker does is wrong.

The trick in making effective use of a grammar/spell checker in French is to
teach students to look out for precisely the kinds of "fautes betes" they
need to learn to avoid making in the first place: gender
assignment/agreement, verb agreement, accents.  All the French grammar/spell
checkers do a good job of flagging these. Other kinds of corrections,
initially at least, students would best ignore until they are surer of their
grammar.   Jack
-- 
Professor Jack Burston
Director
Language Center
School of Humanities
University of Cyprus
75 Kallipoleos
P.O. Box 20537
1678 Nicosia, Cyprus
Phone: +357 2289 2116
Fax:+357 2275 0310





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