Spellchecking as part of language pedagogy

[Richard Robin]

Hi, All!

Having started this discussion, I guess I should after a few responses chime
in. I would not want my students using an *automatic *spellchecker — that
is, when you type "teh," it comes out automatically as "the." On the other
hand, red squigglies provide just enough feedback.

In my students' online writing I see lots of errors that are clearly the
result of careless keyboarding: like mixups with c and ц, a homonophic
keyboard error. Skipped letters duplicated letters are also common and
result of keyboarding.

In addition, I see lots of mixups between э-з and б-в — long after these
errors have been extinguished in handwriting. Red squigglies would help here
too. Of course spellchecking would not catch most case errors (except
spelling rule and hard-soft violations).

Perhaps I am projecting my own habits. I'm a fairly accurate speller in
handwriting (but very slow!) but a mess when keyboarding (in any language).
Whenever I don't spellcheck, I look like an imbecile.

I posted the question because while I have my own opinions (strong pro,
obviously), I was wondering if others saw pedagogical use in having students
type, make errors, and see nothing in the wa of red squigglies until a human
teacher actually corrected the work or in the case of an onlineexercise, the
student actually hit the SUBMIT button.

-Rich Robin


-- 
Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
Director Russian Language Program
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7081
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Russkiy tekst v UTF-8

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