From Spell, Grammar and Style Checkers to Writing Aids for English and French as a Foreign Language: Challenges and Opportunities

For spell and grammar checkers to be useful, they need to be geared towards language learners. In this paper, we focus on spelling, grammar and style checkers, which have been specifically designed for learners of French and English, some of them evolving towards real writing aids. We examine the features of the programs on the market which characterise this evolution towards real writing aids. This paper examines the capabilities of these writing tools when faced with a corpus of learner written production and looks the opportunities these findings present us with as well as the challenges that lay ahead for an efficient integration within foreign language learning environment focusing on written expression.