Is the sky pure today? AwkChecker: an assistive tool for detecting and correcting collocation errors

Authors:

Taehyun Park	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Edward Lank	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Pascal Poupart	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Michael Terry	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Paper (Mov and Pdf):
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1449736&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=81067528&CFTOKEN=37358406&ret=1#Fulltext

Summary:
The purpose of this paper was to describe the AwkChecker program created by the authors that detects improper word phrases so that they can be replaced with the more commonly used phrases. In the paper these phrases are described as Collocation Preferences, which include such things as commonly used expressions, idioms, and word pairings. The goal for this program was to aide non-native speakers who would most likely encounter problems with these collocation preferences. The AwkChecker program works on the basis of a webbased text editor that flags collocation errors and suggests replacement phrases.

The paper also went into detail describing the language problems that Non Native Speakers (NNS) encounter as opposed to what Native Speakers generally encounter. One of the points they were trying to make with this is that the majority of English speakers, roughly 70%, are also NNS and as such there is a great demand in language tools to assist NNS. The authors created their program based on a guideline for NNS language tool design from Knutsson et al. Below is the guideline as described by this paper:

• Real-time feedback is always desirable, especially
  since it helps one improve one’s understanding of
  the language as it is produced
• Tools should not only indicate what is wrong, but
  also provide sufficient information (e.g.,
  examples, grammar rules, etc.) so that users can
  reason about the error and its solution
• The tool should be transparent with respect to its
  capabilities and limitations; users should
  understand what it can and cannot do
• The tool should not be too technical with its
  terminology and should avoid linguistic terms
• Users should be able to focus on producing
  content, not on low-level details such as spelling,
  grammar, etc. That is, the tool should not distract
  from their primary goal of communication

The paper goes on to describe L2 Error Detection Tools and L2 Tutoring Systems, citing many recent work in the fields. The last portion of the paper went into detail describing the functions and algorithms involved in the AwkChecker program.

Discussion:
The AwkChecker program seems like a great step forward in linguistic tools. As a native English speaker I generally don't encounter collocation errors but having worked with non native speakers I have seen the use for a program such as this. I think that a system like AwkChecker would be a great tool to use in any text editor, something to go with already existing tools like spelling and grammar checking.