SPELL CHECKING IN COMPUTER-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING: A STUDY OF MISSPELLINGS BY NONNATIVE WRITERS OF GERMAN Anne Rimrott Diplom, Justus Liebig Universitat, 2002 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS In the Department of Linguistics O Anne Rimrott 2005 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2005 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL Name: Anne Rimrott Degree: Master of Arts Title of Thesis: Spell Checking in Computer-Assisted Language Learning: A Study of Misspellings by Nonnative Writers of German Examining Committee: Chair: Dr. Alexei Kochetov Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics Dr. Trude Heift Senior Supervisor Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics Dr. Chung-hye Han Supervisor Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics Dr. Maria Teresa Taboada Supervisor Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics Dr. Mathias Schulze External Examiner Assistant Professor, Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies University of Waterloo Date DefendedIApproved: SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENCE The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author's written permission.\ Permission for public performance, or limited permission for private scholarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. W. A. C. Bennett Library Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC, Canada Simon Fraser University Ethics Approval The author, whose name appears on the title page of this work, has obtained human research ethics approval from the Simon Fraser University Office of Research Ethics for the research described in this work, or has conducted the research as a member of a project or course approved by the Ethics Office. A copy of the approval letter has been filed at the Theses Office of the University Library at the time of submission of this thesis or project. The original application for ethics approval and letter of approval is filed with the Office of Research Ethics. Inquiries may be directed to that Office. Bennett Library Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC, Canada ABSTRACT This thesis investigates spell checking in Computer-Assisted Language Learning. It analyzes nonnative misspellings and evaluates the performance of a generic spell checker. A total of 1027 unique misspellings were collected from 32 beginners and 16 intermediate university learners of German who worked on two different task types. CLASSY, a classification system for nonnative misspellings that has been developed for this thesis, is introduced. CLASSY categorizes misspellings along four taxonomies: competence vs. performance, linguistic subsystem, language influence, and target modification. Results show that 72% of the nonnative misspellings are competence-related rather than accidental typographical mistakes. Furthermore, the generic spell checker tested on the misspellings of this study corrects only 62% of them. The study also indicates that both proficiency level and task type influence the learners' misspellings and affect the spell checker's correction success. Finally, the thesis makes computational and pedagogical suggestions to enhance spell checking for foreign language writers. DEDICATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Trude Heift, my senior supervisor, for her continuous encouragement and guidance throughout the past years. Thank you, Trude, for investing so much time and effort into my thesis, listening to my ideas, providing me with many helpful suggestions, helping me find my writing style, reading countless drafts of my thesis, and for creating such a nice and friendly atmosphere. I also wish to thank Dr. Chung-hye Han and Dr. Maite Taboada, my committee members, for many insightful comments on earlier drafts of my thesis. Your observations have helped clarify and refine many sections of this work. Thank you also to Dr. Mathias Schulze, my external examiner, for valuable suggestions, especially in resolving some terminological issues. Thank you, Kathrin (Mink), for sacrificing so much of your time thinking about nonnative misspellings and error categories. Your efforts helped enhance this thesis considerably. Thank you, Ivanka (Mazur), for making all these Saturdays at the public library so much more fun. I am grateful to staff, faculty and graduate students at Simon Fraser University for their support. In particular, thank you, Loreley (Hadic Zabala), for your friendship throughout our time as M.A. students and thank you, Carol (Jackson), for being such a great graduate secretary. Thank you, Hans, Elisabeth, Christian and Niklas, my family back home, and Darnir (Trehjo), my love, for always being there for me and for supporting me in everything I do. I am grateful to Friedrich P.J. Rimrott, my late uncle, for inspiring me to pursue graduate studies and for pushing me to work hard to achieve my goals. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the study participants that provided me with the data for my thesis. This project was partially funded by an SFU Graduate Fellowship and various teaching assistantships, for which I am thankful. TABLE OF CONTENTS .. Approval .......................................................................................................................11 ... Abstract .......................................................................................................................111 Dedication ................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements...................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ......................................................................................................vi List of Figures .............................................................................................................ix List of Tables ................................................................................................................ x ... Glossary ..................................................................................................................... xi11 Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Spell Checkers and Their Users ................................................................4 1.1.1 Generic Spell Checkers and Native Speakers ...........................................4 1.1.2 Generic Spell Checkers and Native Speakers with Spelling Difficulties ............................................................................................ 5 1.1.3 Generic Spell Checkers and Nonnative Speakers .....................................7 1.1.4 Spell Checkers Geared at Nonnative Speakers .........................................8 1.2 Research Goals ........................................................................................12 Chapter 2: The Study ...............................................................................................13 2.1 Study Participants ...................................................................................13 2.2 The E-Tutor0 ..........................................................................................15 2.3 Two Task Types ......................................................................................16 2.4 The Corpus of Misspellings ....................................................................18 2.5 Error Classification Procedure ................................................................20 2.5.1 Matching Misspellings With Their Target Words ..................................21 2.5.2 Assigning Misspellings to Error Categories ...........................................21 Chapter 3: Error Classification ............................................................................... 23 3.1 Classifying Learner Errors ......................................................................23 3.1.1 Taxonomies for Classifying Learner Errors ...........................................25 3.2 CLASSY: The Classification System for Nonnative Misspellings Developed in This Study .........................................................................32 3.2.1 The Model .............................................................................................32