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--- 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 *********************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning, and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://consortium.dartmouth.edu). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask]) ***********************************************