3. Speech Output For Proof Reading
• Poor spelling, grammar and lack of sentence structure can
make text difficult to read. Speech output may help the writer
to identify mis-spelled words, and remind and help him or her
to add punctuation and capitals at the correct points.
• Improved writing achieves better results, or poor writing can
cause bad results.
4. Assisting Spelling And Literacy
• Many speech output tools let you easily adjust the text font
and size, and text and background colours, plus spellchecking
and thesaurus facilities.
• Word predictors analyse words as they are written on the
computer and try to ‘predict’ the words from a dictionary.
6. References
• Mitton 1996 ‘Spellchecking by computer’ and ‘English spelling and the
computer’
– Where most of the misspellings for testing come from.
• Church 2007 ‘Compressing Trigram Language Models With Golomb Coding’
– Explains that Word 2007 had context/trigram checking.
• Draffan and James 2010 – ‘Spell checking when working online’
– Says how great Ginger is and illustrates our target market.
• McArthur 1998 ‘From illegible to understandable’
– Poor spellers benefit from word prediction, not spellcheck.
• Pedler 2007 ‘Computer Correction of Real-word Spelling Errors in Dyslexic Text’
– Grammar analysis mechanism, needed because inflection/plural errors
and homophones are so common.
• Spooner 1998 ‘A spelling checker for dyslexic users: user modelling for error
recovery’
– Says dyslexic misspellers are phonetic, but spelling engine built on this
assumption didn’t work because spellings for users are so inconsistent.
7. Spelling errors 1
• Real-word
– The cat is their.
– It’s hair was black.
– You May like may, I don’t.
– Grammar are a problem for many person.
– Every body like alot of correct Ness.
– I like are cat.
– Its about 50% for its that its apostrophe is right.
(From review in Mitton, 1996)
8. Spelling errors 2
• Non-word errors, or nn-wrod erurs.
– Homophones/phonetic misspellings – ‘Phonetic’
• I enteard a compertision.
• I reant in juan it.
– Non-phonetic non-word errors – ‘Garbage’
• Ablatross, akbatross
• Scors, sicer, sliemer
• Bady, abays, badies, bayds
9. Spelling errors 3
• Real-word errors 40%
• Phonetic misspellings 35% Garbage
• Garbage misspellings 25% Real-word
Phonetic
• (Probably fewer real-word errors if you ignore apostrophes –
then about 30%? Sterling 1983. Brooks, Gorman & Kendall
1993, 29% real-word errors. Wing and Baddeley 1980, 26%.)
10. (Assumptions) About Spelling Errors
• 93% (!) of the time the first letter is correct.
– Exceptions: when there’s a common odd rule, like
‘written’, so you get ‘wright’ instead of ‘right’
• Poor spellers make lots of mistakes.
– They won’t be using spellcheckers – word prediction and
speech synthesis (what about non-English?)
• If the spelling is too bad you cannot read the text.
• Reading and writing are possibly different processes.
– Kids can spell things they can’t read, and read things they
can’t spell
– We mghit wirte pohtciallney, but we dno’t raed taht way.
• Words that are uncommon, when encountered, are probably
correct – with important exceptions (‘wont’)
11. (Assumptions) About Spelling Errors
• Frequent words are better-spelled.
High-frequency but irregular
= better spelled than low-
frequency but regular – so
much for phonetics?
• 80% of errors (for most people!) are one only:
– one letter omitted albtross
– one letter wrong akbatross
– one letter inserted alabatross
– an adjacent pair transposed ablatross
13. Spellers 1: Good
• It was a small school situated on the outscirts of Cambridge. There was a large
field behind where we held our sports and at dinner hours played football or in
summer cricket. There were not many pupils, so it was rather quite at times.
There were mostly women teachers although I clearly remember Mr. Heron
who occassionly took us canoeing on the river. Each day we had a french
lesson and we used cartoons, and we also acted these out. I had great
pleasure in this, as it was a change from every day school work. We had many
plays, a may play, a christmas play and other ones during the year. The may
play particularly stands out. We used a cricket net and this was full of flowers
intertwined about the netting. There was a long grand procession, and
fortunately it was a very beautiful day. I can always remember our sports
day, as it was one of the special occassions in the year. There was
rosettes, and drinks although they were not free. We had the traditional
sports, the sack race etc. At school we used to do modelling, making planes
which most of us did. We used to try them out on the field but many were
unsuccesful. In the early part of my primary school we used to go to a
seperate building, not far away and situated behind a church.
14. Spellers 2: OK
• At my primary school our head master was Mr skart he was very nice. Me and
my friend Doreen yourst to wash the teaches cup up after school. Every year
we had a sports day I was in Yellow and Blue teams. The first Second and Firld
year I was in Blue. The forft year I was in Yellow. I enteard a panting
compertison I didnot come any were. But every body who enteard got a
packet of sweets. I sat near my friend Doreen in class. When I was in the firld
year our class would lean somethink to say in the hall and we would say it in
the hall. For a tearm I had french. I did high Jump some dinner times. Every
week we had to copey a pitcher then pant it. Neally every year I was in the
hope race at storts day and also others.
15. Spellers 3: Bad
• That my school I live it and a men come to the school and tine to tiece me to
rend and he life and than a lade and the lade life as will so I that to tine and
rend my still. Mr home was are techer and he was needs and we play game.
We did feirne. And we did and History and nut ball and roundosy, and I reant
in juan it. and Be for I life are pase me 14 summer pasecart and I was ferod
paret indored. and Mr home cave same Boys and girl 6d for pasecart.
Lots more examples in the Oxford Corpus, which we have.
16. About Dyslexic Spelling Errors
• ‘Phonological processing disorders’
– Can’t tell ‘floop’ from ‘foop’
– Can’t turn words into constituent phonemes (hence to
letter groups) nor vice-versa.
– So misspellings are less phonetic? Right? BUT
• No spellchecker helps very poor spellers.
– They need word prediction, word banks or speech
recognition – or something else?
17. How do you spell join?
Joine
It’s not phonetic, but that’s what some people could describe it
as (based on observations)
18. ClaroRead V6 Approach
• Spelling Error Identification
• Need 100% synch with MS Office otherwise inconsistencies
appear – people know red underline from a young age!
• Layered with Spelling Exceptions and Customisable
• Homophone Visual Identification in Word
• Homophone Checking (One by One or choice)
• Homophone List Exclusions and Customisations
• Dynamic Word Choice – Not just prediction
• Success mostly depending on student study skills support
process and training
26. EB Word Banks
• Word banks are grids or lists of whole or part words, or phrases,
that are presented on-screen.
• Many word banks have speech output so that the writer can
listen to the word to confirm it is the
27. Apps – News from Claro!
• ClaroSpeak TTS App for iPad launches shortly
• Visit Claro Stand to see more
• How does Writing support technology change for the tablet.....
