Spellchecking as part of language pedagogy

[Charlotte Douglas]

By the way, can anyone recommend a good Russian spellchecker for  
Macs?  :-)
Charlotte Douglas


On Mar 13, 2010, at 8:41 PM, Richard Robin wrote:

> 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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