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<Paper uid="W97-0902">
  <Title>Developing a new grammar checker for English as a second language</Title>
  <Section position="8" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
7 Concluding remarks
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this paper we have presented the prototype of a second language writing tool for French speakers writing in English. It is made up of a set of writing aids, a problem word highlighter and a grammar checker.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Two characteristics of the checker make it particularly interesting. First, overflagging is reduced. This is done by moving certain semantic problems to the problem word highlighter, gearing the automata to specific errors and interacting with the user from time to time. Second, the use of island processing has kept processing time down to a level that is acceptable to users.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Because we have designed a prototype with the view to commercializing it, scaling up can be achieved quite easily. The dictionary already contains all word classes needed and we do not expect the disambiguation stage to become less efficient when a larger dictionary is used. In addition, the error processing technology that we II have implemented allows for all components to be expanded without degrading the quality. Commercial development will involve increasing the size of the dictionary, adding automata to cover a wider range of errors, finishing some of the writing aids and integrating the completed product, i.e.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> the writing tool, into existing word processors. null As for the reusability of various components of our grammar checker for other language pairs, we believe that many of the errors in English are also made by speakers of other languages, particularly other Romance languages. Thus many of our automata could probably be reused as such.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Ho~'ever, the writing aids and the problem word highlighter would obviously need to be adapted to the user's first language.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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