I would not have imagined that people are being "taught" by the MS WORD grammar checker. I ignore it until I'm almost done with my document. Then I run spell check and also get the grammar suggestions. I am glad to be forced to stop and think about how I have written something, but I rarely accept the suggestion. I thought everyone worked this way.
Today I surveyed (very informally) about a dozen high school students on the topic. I did not find a single one who pays much attention to the green squiggles. A few of our best writers use it like I do, but only to point out places where they might want to reconsider wording or construction. Most kids said something along the lines of, "I have a lot of green squiggles in my documents. I don't feel like I know where to start to get rid of them, so I ignore them." All have had the experience of taking the Grammar Checker's advice, and then getting something marked wrong (by a real teacher) so they are wary.
At my school, our students are required to take Technology Applications. One of the things we stress is that the kids have to be in charge of all their work, and not let a computer lead the way. We take them through exercises showing how the AUTOCOMPLETE feature can get them into trouble, and how to use Spell Check to their advantage and not to their detriment. We also encourage them to read carefully everything they are considering turning in, because we don't accept excuses like "the computer messed it up."
I enjoyed the article by McGee and Ericsson because I never gave any thought to how the grammar checker came to be. It made me wonder if it is possible to have a truly great grammar checker, since context is everything in writing. Even a simplistic algorithm would have to be quite complex. There can be great honesty in work that is not precisely grammatically correct, and it seems to me that art is almost always about breaking some rules.
I'm hard pressed to be alarmed by MS WORD's ubiquity, or by the near-invisibility of the Grammar Checker. It is a tool. It is only doing the job it was designed to do. We don't think a hammer is evil if it smashes our toes when we drop it. We understand that it is heavy and that gravity works even when our toes are underneath hammers.
As to the claim that MS WORD's grammar checker is only programmed by computational linguists, I feel certain that Microsoft is always working to improve its products, and is probably more responsive to the market than we know. Articles such as McGee and Ericcson's cannot have escaped notice, and perhaps right now there are composition teachers, linguists, and programmers working to improve the product. Microsoft is a behemoth, but potentially disruptive innovations are constantly coming along; it would only take the right one to upset the balance of power.
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Cathy, I agree that Microsoft will continue to improve the program and will employ all possible resources to that end. The message I took away from the article was that I need to educate myself and my students about the program’s possibilities and limitations, and I needed the heads-up. It is too easy to ignore it or obey it rather than allow it to work for you. It sounds like you are already doing that at your school. Students might learn those things in a computer aps course at my school, but many of our comp students haven’t yet had such a class.
ReplyDeleteI was particularly struck by the comment, “There can be great honesty in work that is not precisely grammatically correct, and it seems to me that art is almost always about breaking some rules.” I completely agree with both parts of the statement. With my ELL students, their quirks in usage are part of their self-expression at any given stage. To clear away everything that is not completely correct does not reflect their personalities, or frequently, their true opinions. As their language learning progresses, their usage becomes more polished, but I do not aim (nor encourage them to strive) for complete grammatical correctness. Part of the real beauty of language—the art, as you say—is in the unique way a person employs it.