The Impact of Technology on Language Learning
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies, several grammar checkers are introduced as writing tools for language learners. Language learners can receive immediate corrective feedback from these gram
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Abstract. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies, several grammar checkers are introduced as writing tools for language learners. Language learners can receive immediate corrective feedback from these grammar checkers. In particularly, the new technologies have greatly increased the opportunities for students to receive input outside of the classroom. Accordingly, technology has become an important role in the field of language education. The purpose of this study is to review the literature of grammar checker technology, to introduce the current available grammar checkers and further to provide suggestions for language learners and teachers. Keywords: technology, language learning, grammar checker.
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Introduction
Technology can be utilized as teaching tool, teaching resource, learning tool, and learning resource. As a result, technology has become an important role in the field of language education. In second language acquisition research, Tschichold (2003) claimed the importance of corrective feedback on students’ free production for progress in the learning process. Consequently, English teachers who teach writing courses usually pay much effort on the feedback of students’ writings. In order to reduce the teaching load for writing teachers and give students faster feedback, various English grammar checkers have been developed and have begun to emerge.
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Grammar Checkers
Basically, there are three different ways to implement a grammar checker: syntaxbased checkers, statistics-based checkers and rule-based checkers [12]. In syntaxbased approach, a text is completely parsed. The sentences are analyzed first, and each sentence is assigned a tree structure. In statistics-based approach, a language model which contains a large training corpus including many short phrases can be used for detecting and correcting certain types of grammar errors (Atwell & Elliott, 1987; Chodorow & Leacock, 2000). In rule-based approach, a set of rules is matched against a text which has at least been POS tagged (Chen, 2009). James J. (Jong Hyuk) Park et al. (eds.), Future Information Technology, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 309, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-55038-6_112, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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Y.-L. Wu
There are many English grammar checkers available to EFL learners. In general, grammar checkers can be divided into two categories: PC-based grammar checkers and web-based grammar checkers. In a number of studies (e.g., Liou, 1991; Napolitano & Stent, 2009; Chen, 2009; Feldman-Simon & Fitzpatrick, 2010; Lawley, 2012), it mentioned some different kinds of grammar checkers currently available in our technological environment. There are ten grammar checkers introduced and described below. (1) TechWriter (for Windows) It is a personalizable writing assistance program for advance program for advanced learners of English that encourages skills learning (Napolitano, & Stent, 2009, p. 611). TechWriter provide a spell checker and also uses a corpu
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