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Objectives:
- To demonstrate to students that conventions of style and grammar operate within the context of intended audience, making it necessary for them to know a variety of ways to write.
- To acquaint students with the options available to them in using grammar checking software.
- To acquaint students with the conventions and limitations of grammar checking software.
Using a projector for whole class viewing, access WordPerfect (or any other word processing program used that has a grammar checking feature). Bring up the grammar checker specifically, and access the Options roll-down menu. Show students that they can customize their grammar checker to the kind of writing they will be doing, and hence, to their anticipated audience. Experiment with various texts and style settings, and note how the grammar checker reacts in each instance. Some interesting examples are:
- Checking for active vs. passive voice. Changing the style option from "Student Composition" to "Technical or Scientific" makes the grammar checker react differently to sentences written in passive voice. While the use of the passive voice is considered a potential style flaw in student writing, it is commonly the norm when writing technical or scientific documents.
- The different ways the gammar checker treats sentences with dangling modifiers. For instance, when set on the Informal setting, the grammar checker noted no problems in the sentence, "Without knowing his name, it was difficult to introduce him". But when the style setting was changed to Strict, reflecting a more formal audience, the grammar checker suggested a change in the independent clause to read "introducing him was difficult".
- Areas in which grammar checker appear to fall down on the job. One example can be found in the sentence, "After reading the original study, the article remained unconvincing". The style here is ambiguous because it reads as if the article checked the study. Yet, the grammar checking software used to develop this lesson plan failed to suggest any revision in any style setting.
- Suggestions for revisions which are ridiculous, or just plain wrong. Even when set on informal style, the grammar checker tagged the phrase, "I sort of realized....". It cited the rule that the preposition of usually comes before a gerund, instead of a base verb. It suggested the phrase be revised to "sort of realizing", which make no sense within the context of the phrase.
It might also prove interesting to investigate how grammar checkers handle text from published authors. Excerpts from Stephen King's Carrie exemplify text that is fun to play with. Selected academic texts can yield similarly interesting results.
The goal of the lesson is for students to understand that grammar checkers have their limitations as well as their uses. They cannot, in all cases, be depended upon as substitutes for peer editing.
Extending the Lesson:
In addition to style questions, grammar checkers also offer opportunities to review parts of speech, and sentence construction. These options make it possible to use them in a tutorial context, targeting general problems areas as needed.
Note: The examples in this lesson plan were obtained from the Grammartik software featured in WordPerfect, version 11. Since other versions and other brands may produce different results, it may be necessary for the user to develop other examples.
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