Building a pedagogic spellchecker for L2 learners of Spanish

Abstract In 2016, Lawley proposed an easy-to-build spellchecker specifically designed to help second language (L2) learners in their writing process by facilitating self-correction. The aim was to overcome the disadvantages to L2 learners posed by generic spellcheckers (GSC), such as that embedded in Microsoft Word. Drawbacks include autocorrection, misdiagnoses, and overlooked errors. With the aim of imparting explicit L2 spelling knowledge, this correcting tool does not merely suggest possible alternatives to the detected error but also provides explanations of any relevant spelling patterns. Following Lawley’s (2016) recommendations, the present study developed a prototype computer-based pedagogic spellchecker (PSC) to aid L2 learners in self-correcting their written production in Spanish. First, a corpus was used to identify frequent spelling errors of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) learners. Handcrafted feedback was then designed to tackle the commonest misspellings. To subsequently evaluate this PSC’s efficacy in error detection and correction, another learner Spanish corpus was used. Sixty compositions were analysed to determine the PSC’s capacity for error recognition and feedback provision in comparison with that of a GSC. Results indicate that the PSC detected over 90% of the misspellings, significantly outperforming the GSC in error detection. Both provided adequate feedback on two out of three detected errors, but the pedagogic nature of the former has the added advantage of facilitating self-learning (Blázquez-Carretero & Woore, 2021). These findings suggest that it is feasible to develop spellcheckers that provide synchronous feedback, allowing SFL learners to confidently self-correct their writing while saving time and effort on the teacher’s part.