Spelling Mistakes

A spelling error detection and correction application is typically based on three main components: a dictionary (or reference word list), an error model and a language model. While most of the attention in the literature has been directed to the language model, we show how improvements in any of the three components can lead to significant cumulative improvements in the overall performance of the system. We develop our dictionary of 9.2 million fully-inflected Arabic words (types) from a morphological transducer and a large corpus, validated and manually revised. We improve the error model by analyzing error types and creating an edit distance re-ranker. We also improve the language model by analyzing the level of noise in different data sources and selecting an optimal subset to train the system on. Testing and evaluation experiments show that our system significantly outperforms Microsoft Word 2013, OpenOffice Ayaspell 3.4 and Google Docs.

This paper focuses on three language systems: the Greek, the English and the German languages, which we will examine as to their transparency. This contrastive analysis was undertaken in the context of my doctoral research with the subject "Teaching spelling to learners with dyslexia learning German as a second foreign language in primary education" (Tsakalidou, 2020). These language systems were analysed in detail, due to the fact that we examined the spelling difficulties of learners with dyslexia and created the theoretical framework as to the three languages involved in the research. The learners, who took part in this research (95 learners between the ages of 10 and 11 years, 20 of who had dyslexia), had Greek as their first (mother) language, English as their first foreign language and German as their second foreign language. Research of various language systems has shown that dyslexia is recorded equally in all language systems, however, the difficulties that dyslexic learners face are increased in opaque orthographic systems (for example English).

This article examines the alternative English spelling practices of a student who is considered to be a long-term English learner. It draws on a theoretical framework that integrates a social perspective on spelling with a rejection of idealized conceptions of bilingualism. The analyzed English spellings presented in this article were identified in eight texts that the focal student composed during her English language arts class. Notably, this examination was contextualized within the focal student's linguistic and schooling history. The resulting findings document that the focal student was a simultaneous bilingual who had a troubled history with formal schooling—the place where many young people learn spelling conventions. The predominant practice that characterized her alternative spellings was her use of conventional English sound-to-letter relationships to create a written echo of the speech patterns of her home, school, and community. When her alternative spelling did not reflect these Englishes, they typically illustrated her familiarity with the normative spelling of particular words. Yet the practices that characterized her spelling meant that they strayed from accepted conventions (e.g., transposition/omission/insertion of letters). The focal student's alternative spelling practices illustrated her familiarity with the English writing system and the depth of her knowledge of multiple Englishes.

В данной работе рассматривается развитие систем автоматического обнаружения и исправления опечаток и требования к таким системам на разных исторических этапах развития. Несмотря на то,
что  с  1960-х гг. качество исправления неуклонно растет, остаются актуальными основные технологические проблемы: обнаружение слов с опечатками и  выбор оптимального кандидата на исправление.
Детальный анализ контекстных признаков, таких как символьный контекст, морфологические и синтаксические характеристики, для задач, требующих автоматической коррекции орфографии, может быть полезен для улучшения качества работы систем в сфере обеих проблем.

This study is an analysis of the spelling errors made by EFL students of English language in one of the Jordanian universities, Tafila Technical University (TTU). It aims at identifying the types of errors students at TTU make in spelling when answering essay questions. It also seeks the spelling difficulties the students have when writing English. The study was conducted based on the information observed and gathered by the researcher within 2 years from students’ answer sheets. Because of the irregularities of spelling rules and the confusion or misspelling English pronunciation sometimes brings about, the present study is primarily conducted to suggest solutions to spelling mistakes and to find out why most students make such mistakes in spelling. In addition, the study reported that the students have the same problems and that they make identical errors in English spelling.

If solving a riddle involves returning the obscured referent to a state of clarity, then what are we to do when we encounter in the margin of Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s Aenigma 100 a scribe’s solution that looks like this: ut hkskdkxt? Such playful cryptography was quite common in early medieval manuscripts, particularly in the context of didactic texts and riddles, but there is something peculiar about this example (and several of the others that surround it in Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5. 35): it contains an error, a slip that has made it all but impossible for modern editors and scholars to decrypt it accurately. But that error and others like it give us a new way to understand the nature of early medieval cryptographic inscriptions. By recognizing such mistakes and errors as an integral feature of scribal cryptography, we discover that that some of them may have actually involved tremendous ingenuity.

I intend to try to say something about category mistakes by considering a theory of metaphor. In this I follow precedent (Magidor 2013, 2017). The focus will be on John Searle’s (1979a) paper on metaphor. However, there will be an important section that focuses on Searle’s theory of social reality (Searle 1995). Three major conclusions lie in wait. The first says category mistakes are meaningless. The second says category mistakes are to be identified with the things we do with sentences. The third says metaphorical utterances and category mistakes do not co-occur. The paper has six sections introducing Searle’s ideas and each ends by considering how they impact on category mistakes.

Spelling error corpora can be collected from students’ written essays, homework, dictations,
translations, tests and lecture notes. Spelling errors can be classified into whole word errors, faulty graphemes and
faulty phonemes in which graphemes are deleted, added, reversed or substituted. They can be used for identifying
phonological and orthographic problems; spelling strategies that EFL students use in spelling English; spelling
error causes or sources and relationship between spelling and decoding weaknesses. The paper gives examples of
spelling errors and shows how spelling errors are quantified. Recommendations for remediation are also given.
Key words: spelling; error corpus; EFL; phonological errors; orthographic errors.

A spelling error detection and correction application is typically based on three main components: a dictionary (or reference word list), an error model and a language model. While most of the attention in the literature has been directed to the language model, we show how improvements in any of the three components can lead to significant cumulative improvements in the overall performance of the system. We develop our dictionary of 9.2 million fully-inflected Arabic words (types) from a morphological transducer and a large corpus, validated and manually revised. We improve the error model by analyzing error types and creating an edit distance re-ranker. We also improve the language model by analyzing the level of noise in different data sources and selecting an optimal subset to train the system on. Testing and evaluation experiments show that our system significantly outperforms Microsoft Word 2013, OpenOffice Ayaspell 3.4 and Google Docs.

Arabic language is strongly structured and considered as one of the most highly inflected and derivational languages. Learning Arabic morphology is a basic step for language learners to develop language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Arabic morphology is non-concatenative and provides the ability to attach a large number of affixes to each root or stem that makes combinatorial increment of possible inflected words. As such, Arabic lexical (morphological and phonological) rules may be confusing for second language learners. Our study indicates that research and development endeavors on spelling, and checking of grammatical errors does not provide adequate interpretations to second language learners' errors. In this paper we address issues related to error diagnosis and feedback for second language learners of Arabic verbs and how they impact the development of a web-based intelligent language tutoring system. The major aim is to develop an Arabic intelligent language tutoring system that solves these issues and helps second language learners to improve their linguistic knowledge. Learners are encouraged to produce input freely in various situations and contexts, and are guided to recognize by themselves the erroneous functions of their misused expressions. Moreover, we proposed a framework that allows for the individualization of the learning process and provides the intelligent feedback that conforms to the learner's expertise for each class of error. Error diagnosis is not possible with current Arabic morphological analyzers. So constraint relaxation and edit distance techniques are successfully employed to provide error-specific diagnosis and adaptive feedback to learners. We demonstrated the capabilities of these techniques in diagnosing errors related to Arabic weak verbs formed using complex morphological rules. As a proof of concept, we have implemented the components that diagnose learner's errors and generate feedback which have been effectively evaluated against test data acquired from real teaching environment. The experimental results were satisfactory, and the performance achieved was 74.34 percent in terms of recall rate.

Arabic is a language of rich and complex morphology. The nature and peculiarity of Arabic make its morphological and phonological rules confusing for second language learners (SLLs). The conjugation of Arabic verbs is central to the formulation of an Arabic sentence because of its richness of form and meaning. In this paper, we address issues related to the morphological analysis of ill formed Arabic verbs in order to identify the source of errors and provide an in formative feedback to SLLs of Arabic. The edit distance and constraint relaxation techniques are used to demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach in generating all possible analyses of erroneous Arabic verbs written by SLLs. Filtering mechanisms are applied to exclude the irrelevant constructions and determine the target stem. A morphological analyzer has been developed and effectively evaluated using real test data. It achieved satisfactory results in terms of the recall rate.

The aim of the current study was investigating EFL learners' perceptions of using automatic spelling correction software for learning English spelling among male and female EFL learners. 91 university students (female=42, male=49) of three General English (GE) courses participated in the study. The participants were asked to complete the measure of automatic spelling correction software use perceptions that assessed their perceptions with respect to (a) awareness of how the software functions and corrects the spelling mistakes, (b) the educational value of the software for learning English spelling, (c) learners' dependence on the software in learning and checking English spelling, and (d) the way software is helpful in improving English spelling. The result of descriptive statistics showed that male students' mean values on all four components were higher than those of female students meaning that male students were more aware of how the software works, had more positive perceptions of the educational value of the software, were more dependent on the software in learning/checking English spelling, and hold more positive perceptions of the role of the software in improving their English spelling. The result of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) supported a significant difference between two groups' general perceptions of automatic spelling correction software use. Further analysis showed that the only significant difference between male and female participants was related to their awareness of how the software functions; indicating that male students were more aware of the way the software works and corrects spelling mistakes.

Resumo: Este artigo trata de hipersegmentações de palavras que se caracterizam por emprego não convencional de uma fronteira gráfica (por meio de branco ou hífen) dentro dos limites de palavra, como " em bora " , " chama-da ". Em estudo conduzido sobre esses dados, identificamos motivações advindas de informações prosódica e morfossintática somadas às de natureza letrada. Mostramos que há características linguísticas recorrentes nesses registros de fronteiras de palavras, a partir da análise de textos produzidos por alunos que cursavam as quatro últimas séries do ensino fundamental em uma escola pública paulista. Neste artigo, avançamos nesse estudo ao analisarmos um dado singular cujas características não coincidem com as que se mostraram recorrentes, como demonstraremos. Argumentaremos que a presença não convencional de marca de fronteira dentro dos limites da palavra escrita que analisamos pode ser interpretada como representação de configurações prosódicas, de natureza rítmica e entoacional, as quais contribuem para a construção das relações de sentidos do texto. Palavras-chave: Palavra. Prosódia. Ortografia. Oralidade. Letramento.

We’re all familiar with abbreviations in written English and other European languages—taking for granted such common conventions as Dr. (for Doctor) and POTUS (for President of the United States). These conventions are inherited from the Romans, who used them in written Latin on monuments, coins, and manuscripts more than two thousand years ago. Because the Germanic fuþark (runes) were borrowed from the Roman alphabet in the 2nd century AD, similar conventions can also be found on Viking rune stones and runic manuscripts. Furthermore, it seems that the Romans themselves inherited some of these conventions, for they have been documented in the c. 2000 BC Proto-Sinaïtic abjad: the ultimate ancestor of most modern alphabets, including our own. What is less well known is that very similar conventions can actually be found in many unrelated logophonetic writing systems, including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mycenaean Linear B, and Aztec (Nahuatl) hieroglyphic writing.

Maya writing is no exception, and it clearly employed several distinct and complex abbreviational conventions. But there are significant challenges to the investigation of abbreviational conventions in a writing system that is still actively being deciphered. How do we identify abbreviations in Maya writing? That is, how do we know the difference between what is written and what is intended (to take up Miguel Civil's point)? And how do we distinguish intentional abbreviations from mere structural ‘lack of fit’ between a logosyllabic writing system and the language it records (to consider John Justeson's observation)? And, finally, what are the implications of these abbreviational strategies for the ongoing work of decipherment? Each of the workshop leaders has grappled with these questions in his own work, and we will attempt to answer them in a team-taught seminar-style workshop, turning from mini-lectures to guided hands-on work with the texts, to integrated discussions of our findings.

Flor M. (2012). Four types of context for automatic spelling correction. Traitement Automatique des Langues (TAL), 53:3, 61-99.
This paper presents an investigation on using four types of contextual information for improving the accuracy of automatic correction of single-token non-word misspellings. The task is framed as contextually-informed re-ranking of correction candidates. Immediate local context is captured by word n-grams statistics from a Web-scale language model. The second approach measures how well a candidate correction fits in the semantic fabric of the local lexical neighborhood, using a very large Distributional Semantic Model. In the third approach, recognizing a misspelling as an instance of a recurring word can be useful for reranking. The fourth approach looks at context beyond the text itself. If the approximate topic can be known in advance, spelling correction can be biased towards the topic. Effectiveness of proposed methods is demonstrated with an annotated corpus of 3,000 student essays from international high-stakes English language assessments. The paper also describes an implemented system that achieves high accuracy on this task."

Spelling is a complex cognitive activity in which several mental processes are involved. Learning to spell English as a second language involves the correct association of spoken sounds (phonemes) and written symbols (graphemes). The correct association of phonemes and graphemes involves phonological, orthographic, semantic, and morphological skills on the part of the EFL student. Identifying the strategies that students employ while spelling English words will help instructors in diagnosing students' spelling weaknesses, and in planning spelling instruction. A strategy refers to the conscious or unconscious processes which students employ in learning and using a second language. It is the way in which a student attempts to figure out the meanings and uses of words, grammatical or spelling rules. A learning strategy may be applied to simple tasks such as learning a list of new words, or more complex involving language comprehension and production (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992). In this study, a spelling strategy will refer to the mental processes that EFL students use to represent spoken sounds by written symbols. Spelling strategies were classified by researchers in different ways. For example, Beers, Beers and Grant (1977) classified the strategies that children in grades 1 to 4 use in spelling English into: a letter-name strategy, the addition of an incorrect vowel after a correct vowel, using their own concept of silent vowels after long vowels, the incorrect substitution of a short vowel for another short vowel. Spelling strategies that kindergarten, first and second grade children use in spelling L1 were classified by Gentry (1978) into a correct strategy, a transitional strategy, a phonetic strategy, a prephonetic strategy and a deviant strategy. Lennox and Spiegel (1996) identified two spelling strategies: phonological and visual strategies. They defined a phonological strategy as the proc ess in which spelling is based on the relationship between letters and sounds in English. In a visual strategy, the students use a process of direct lexical access. They replicate the f orm of a word using orthographic memory with no intermediate phonological skills. A review of the spelling literature has revealed that the strategies that students use in L1 spelling were investigated by several studies. Silva & Yarborough (1990) classified spelling errors. Nolen and McCartin (1985) examined the spelling strategies of first through fifth grade students on the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT). Stuart (1990) investigated processing strategies in a phoneme deletion task. Stuart explored the factors that govern the use of phonological and orthographic strategies in a difficult consonant deletion task by 23 nine-year-old children.

 The definition of orthography  The orthographic system  The phonological system  L2 English phonology acquisation and the bias of orthography  Conclusion  The English word « orthography » dates from the 15th century. It comes from the French « orthographie », from Latin « orthographia », which derives from Greek orthos, « correct » and graphein « to write ».

This paper describes the development of an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) system for learning Arabic. This system could be used for learning Arabic by students at primary schools or by learners of Arabic as a second or foreign language. It explores the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for learning Arabic. The learners are encouraged to produce sentences freely in various situations and contexts and guided to recognise by themselves the erroneous or inappropriate functions of their misused expressions. In this system, we use NLP tools (including morphological analyser and syntax analyser) and error analyser to issue feedback to the learner. Furthermore, we propose a mechanism of correction by the learner which allows the learner to correct the typed sentence independently, and allows the learner to realise that what the error is.

Whole-word frequency effects are shown to exist in what appears to be a completely regular system, the spelling of prefix-final /z/ in Russian. Russian prefixes that underlyingly end in /z/ (roz-, bez-, iz-) end in [s] on the surface when followed by a voiceless consonant. According to the rules of Russian orthography, the surface form, rather than the underlying form, must be reflected in the spelling. However, spelling errors reflecting the underlying form often occur, especially for the prefix bez-. The present paper reports that the error rate, either in natural typing on the web or in a classroom dictation task, for a given word is negatively correlated with the frequency of the word, suggesting that Russian writers rely, to a significant extent, on memory of complete orthographic forms as opposed to the orthographic rule.  The  frequency  effect  holds  even within the set of regular inflectional variants of a single lexeme, with more frequent wordforms showing lower error rates. The evidence demonstrates a high degree of reliance on whole-form lexical retrieval even in what appears to be a regular system that is explicitly taught to the writers throughout their schooling in a morphologically rich language and thus provides support for the use of lexical retrieval even when it is not necessary ( Baayen et al. 2002, Butterworth 1983, Bybee 1985, 2000, vs. DiSciullo and Williams 1987, Pinker 1991). However, reliance on retrieval is argued to be especially strong when there is a relatively long period of temporary uncertainty regarding which rule is applicable during processing (see also Albright 2009, Barca et al. 2007, Burani et al. 2006). The importance of temporary uncertainty and resulting rule competition
suggests that the regular/irregular distinction needs to be reconsidered as even fully “regular” systems may feature rule competition due to temporary uncertainties  about  rule  applicability.  Reliance  on  retrieval  may  go  largely  undetected in Russian during schooling because teaching and test materials focus on the spelling of frequent words, which can be either produced by rule or retrieved as wholes. The largely complementary methodological challenges in studying lexical frequency effects in corpus and experimental data are discussed.

Abstract: The article examines Polish translations of the Derridian term différance. Polish philosophical discourse uses the following renditions of différance: róż (ni (c) oś) ć by Bogdan Banasiak, różNICa by Tadeusz Sławek, gra-na-zwłokę-o-różnicę by Stanisław Cichowicz and the most popular: różnia by Joanna Skoczylas. Should a mistake be deliberately committed in Polish, as it was done in the original? Or should it be corrected, and if so–how to explain the correction?

This study aimed at investigating the impact of using spelling strategies on writing performance among intermediate EFL learners in Iran. To this end, 40 intermediate female students aged between 15 to 25 were selected in Khorram Abad, Iran. They were homogenized based on their performance on Oxford Quick Placement Test, were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received writing instruction based on a number of spelling strategies during 12 sessions lasting 60 minutes. In contrast, the control group was instructed based tradition approach where no spelling strategy was explicitly taught. Furthermore, two parallel writing tests, designed by a panel of well-experienced EFL teachers, were administered as pre-test and post-test to measure the participants' writing ability before and after the instructions. Results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of gain scores on the writing post-test. In addition, it was found that " applying knowledge of word meanings, derivations, prefixes, and suffixes " was the most frequently used and " asking a superior speller for help " was the least frequent strategy used by the experimental group. Finally, pedagogical implications for the EFL teachers and learners were discussed in light of the findings.

Ambiguity is a major issue in any NLP application that occurs when multiple interpretations of the same language phenomenon are produced. Given the complexity of the Arabic morphological system, it is difficult to determine what the intended meaning of the writer is. Moreover, Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems which need to analyze erroneous learner answers, generally, introduce techniques, such as constraints relaxation, that would produce more interpretations than systems designed for processing well-formed input. This paper addresses issues related to the morphological disambiguation of corrected interpretations of erroneous Arabic verbs that were written by beginner to intermediate Second Language Learners. The morphological disambiguation has been developed and effectively evaluated using real test data. It achieved satisfactory results in terms of the recall rate.

This paper addresses the development of an automated lexical error diagnosis system, which helps Arabic second language learners to learn well-formed weak verbs. The learners are encouraged to produce input freely in various situations and contexts and guided to recognize by themselves the erroneous or inappropriate functions of their misused expressions. In this system, we successfully used constraint relaxation and edit-distance techniques to provide error-specific diagnosis and feedback to second language learners of Arabic. We demonstrated the capabilities of these techniques to diagnose errors related to the Arabic weak verb which is formed using complex morphological rules. Furthermore, the developed system allows for individualization of the learning process by providing feedback that conforms to the learner's expertise. Inexperienced learners might require detailed instruction while experienced learners benefit from higher level reminders and explanations.

У статті зібрано і проаналізовано польськомовні інскрипції з помилками різного характеру (мовні, технічні, змістові), що присутні у культурному середовищі сучасного Львова. Зроблено припущення з приводу їх виникнення та запропоновано стратегію їх використання як об’єктів туристичної привабливості.
Ключові слова: польськомовні інскрипції, помилка, Львів.

Spelling is a basic skill as well as means of acquiring knowledge over the school years. Furthermore, it
is a complex cognitive process, which can be challenging for learners with specific learning difficulties
(dyslexia) in their mother language as well as when learning a foreign language. The foreign language
teachers face the challenge of teaching learners with dyslexia within the mainstream classroom in
primary education every day. They need to become equipped with further knowledge and skills, so that
they are able to identify these difficulties and teach learners with dyslexia more effectively in an inclusive
way (Tsakalidou, Koufokotsiou, & Gaganis, in Press; Τσακαλίδου, 2020, 2019a, 2019b, in press).
In the present study we examined the spelling difficulties of learners with dyslexia, when learning
German as a second foreign language. The aim of the study was twofold: (a) Comparative analysis of
the spelling difficulties across two populations (76 learners between 10 and 11 years, twenty of who had
dyslexia). (b) Evaluation of the effectiveness of intervention in spelling in respect to learners with
dyslexia.
We analyzed the three books, which had been approved for teaching German as a second foreign
language in primary schools (during the years 2015-2017) and constructed a spelling test based on a
standardized test for spelling in the Greek language (mother language of the learners) (Sideridis, Simos,
Mouzaki, & Protopapas, under review; Πρωτόπαπας, Δρακοπούλου, & Φάκου, 2010; Πρωτόπαπας &
Σκαλούμπακας, 2010). Satisfactory construct validity and internal consistency reliability was
demonstrated (split-half reliability test). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this test was .944.
According to the comparative analysis of our data, gathered from the two groups (learners with dyslexia
and learners of the same age without dyslexia) during Phase 1 of our research, the p-value (p=0.001)
indicated strong evidence against the null hypothesis, so we came to the conclusion that the difference
between these two groups was statistically significant (Altrichter, Posch, & Somekh, 2018; Cohen,
Manion, & Morrison, 2007). The most common spelling mistakes among learners with dyslexia learning
German as a second foreign language were recorded and analyzed.
During Phase 2 of our research we implemented various teaching methods in the classroom, including
differentiated and multisensory instruction, as well as other modifications according to the specific
difficulties and preferences of the learners with dyslexia (Aidinis & Nunes, 2001; Bahr, Silliman, &
Berninger, 2009; Berninger et al., 2010; Bondie, Dahnke & Zusho, 2019; Bruck & Treiman, 1990;
Caravolas, Volín, & Hulme, 2005; Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Tsakalidou, Koufokotsiou, & Gaganis, in
Press; Τσακαλίδου, 2020, 2019a, 2019b, in press).
In Phase 3 there was a statistically significant difference in the spelling test (according to the pre-test and
post-test evaluation) for the learners with dyslexia (p=0.001), which proved the positive impact of change
in teaching methodology.
The results of this study prove that the modification in teaching methodology (differentiated and
multisensory instruction, etc.) is very effective for learners with dyslexia. The specific suggestions and
tools used in the present study can be implemented in everyday practice, when teaching German as a
foreign language, as well as other foreign languages.

Dada la importancia que tienen los medios de comunicación en la sociedad actual, el correcto uso del lenguaje debería ser parte de su compromiso cultural con los ciudadanos a los que se dirigen. En este sentido, este artículo pretende analizar y estudiar los errores registrados en los rótulos sobreimpresos que aparecen en los informativos de televisión a fin de determinar su origen y pedir responsabilidades, debido a la influencia lingüística que ejercen sobre la población. Para el desarrollo del trabajo empírico se ha escogido la técnica cualitativa del estudio de caso que hemos complementado con un enfoque cuantitativo, de forma que establecemos una perspectiva metodológica mixta que nos permite analizar mejor los errores que entrañan los rótulos de televisión en los programas informativos puros de las cadenas privadas Antena 3 y Telecinco y la pública TVE en su formato de mediodía, por ser los que mayor audiencia poseen. Los resultados apuntan a que la mayoría de los errores responden a la inmediatez imperante en el formato noticioso audiovisual así como a la limitación de espacio que imponen los rótulos sobreimpresos, sin embargo, existe un elevado porcentaje de incorrecciones que procede de un desconocimiento de la norma lingüística o la escasa dedicación empleada por el rotulista a su estudio y desarrollo.

A spelling error detection and correction application is based on three main components: a dictionary (or reference word list), an error model and a language model. While most of the attention in the literature has been directed to the language model, we show how improvements in any of the three components can lead to significant cumulative improvements in the overall performance of the system. We semi-automatically develop a dictionary of 9.3 million fully inflected Arabic words using a morphological transducer and a large corpus. We improve the error model by analysing error types and creating an edit distance based re-ranker. We also improve the language model by analysing the level of noise in different sources of data and selecting the optimal subset to train the system on. Testing and evaluation experiments show that our system significantly outperforms Microsoft Word 2010, OpenOffice Ayaspell and Google Docs.

Spelling correction has attracted a lot of attention in the NLP community. However, models have been usually evaluated on artificially-created or proprietary corpora. A publicly-available corpus of authentic misspellings, annotated in context, is still lacking. To address this, we present and release an annotated data set of 6,121 spelling errors in context, based on a corpus of essays written by English language learners. We also develop a minimally-supervised context-aware approach to spelling correction. It achieves strong results on our data: 88.12% accuracy. This approach can also train with a minimal amount of annotated data (performance reduced by less than 1%). Furthermore, this approach allows easy porta-bility to new domains. We evaluate our model on data from a medical domain and demonstrate that it rivals the performance of a model trained and tuned on in-domain data.

Thirty six EFL freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were given a dictation, a listening comprehension test and a decoding test. The purpose of the study was to find out whether EFL freshmen students' spelling ability correlates with their listening comprehension and decoding skills. Data analysis showed that the typical EFL freshman student misspelled 41.5% of the words on the dictation, gave 49.5% correct responses on the listening comprehension test, and 52% correct responses on the decoding test. The median and mean scores showed that the subjects' spelling, listening and decoding achievement is low, which implied that the subjects were
having spelling, listening comprehension and decoding difficulties. The students' spelling errors and correct
listening comprehension and decoding responses revealed strong correlations between spelling ability, listening comprehension and decoding skills. This means that good spelling ability in EFL is related to good listening comprehension and good decoding skills. The better the listening comprehension and decoding abilities, the fewer the spelling errors. When listening comprehension and decoding skills are poor, spelling ability is also poor. Recommendations for spelling, listening and decoding instruction are given.

The paper provides a new analysis of the apostrophe in various languages which is less redundant and complies better with linguistic intuition than traditional definitions.The apostrophe does not mark theomissionof letters, as traditionally assumed (Englishit’s, Germanauf’m‘on the’, Frenchl’ami‘the friend’), but indicates importantmorpheme boundarieswherever this is necessary for certain reasons. Such an indication of a morpheme boundary can be necessitated by several factors, e.g. the omission of letters (Englishit’s, Germanauf’m, Frenchl’ami), proper names (TurkishAnkara’da‘in Ankara’, EnglishJohn’s), or graphical code-switching (Englishtwo l’s, Russianlaptop’ов‘laptop,gen. pl.’).This explanation covers even most violations of current orthographic norms, e.g. GermanHäus’chen‘small house’, and it has no exceptions whatsoever in formal texts. (Englishisn’t, German’nauf‘up’, Frenchp’tit‘small’ are mere ‘transcripts’ of colloquial speech.)

Weekly spelling tests have been the staple of elementary education for the last 100 years. Here students memorize a list of words each week and then take a test on Friday. This is not very effective. Studying a list of words out of any meaningful context has minimal effect in helping to develop students' spelling proficiency; and worse, they keep students away from real writing experiences. This article describes a better way to help students learn how to spell correctly in authentic writing conditions