Abstract
The present study has explored how pairs of students deployed digital tools (spelling software) as resources in spontaneously occurring corrections of spelling errors. Drawing on the sociocultural theory of learning and ethnomethodological (Conversation Analytic) insights into social interaction, it has identified a range of consistent practices and uses of the spelling tools that were emergent in the everyday educational activities. As demonstrated, technology-assisted error corrections constituted a complex situation, where a number of socioculturally significant factors (goals of the task, properties of the software, and physical access to computer applications) shaped the trajectories of joint work. The present analysis shows in detail how the students approached the visually manifested language production errors by using two kinds of software resources, spelling lists, and a diagnostic tool. The inherent conceptual distinctions, characteristic of these tools, configured joint interpretative work and efforts to correct the errors in different ways. Recurrently, the students’ technology-based corrections were designed as autonomous, stepwise, locally improvised problem solutions, which were subsequently submitted for the evaluation of the diagnostic software. Overall, the study shows that the under-specification of the software’s instructions opened a space for the students’ creative engagement. The potentials of joint spelling software-assisted corrections for collaborative learning are discussed.
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Notes
The spellchecker may diagnose both real spelling errors, and “false” misspellings, when no error has been made (for instance, when the software’s pre-designed features simply do not recognize/entail a specific word).
In conversational activities, correction is defined as a specific order of discursive work that refers to replacement of a “production error” or “mistake” with what is “normatively” correct (MacBeth 2004: 705; Jefferson 1987; Schegloff et al., 1977). The orientation seems to be toward the normative correctness of a correction outcome rather than toward the problem of common understanding (MacBeth 2004, p. 729). Repair is a different, prior order of discursive work that deals with participants’ problems in mutual understanding and allows assurance of the recurrence of intersubjectivity in the conversation (Schegloff 1992). As demonstrated by MacBeth in his study of corrections in instructional/educational activities (2004, p. 728), correction shows its relevance only in the presence of the achievement of common understanding about the trouble source, that is, that a normatively adequate remedy for a production error (mistake) is being requested.
This feature is characteristic of corrections made with spelling software and differs significantly from classroom corrections (MacBeth 2004), where only one participant, namely the teacher, has the sequential possibility to authorize an adequate correction.
Digital software resources (diagnostic tools and spelling lists) in different ways conceptualise words as linguistic elements, providing for interpretative engagement in different aspects of language production: basic phonologic (and morphologic) analysis (largely designed as the sound—letter analysis (Ex. 1a, b; Ex. 2) as compared to the selection of lexical and morphological alternatives (Ex. 3).
Although there is much to be understood about the kind of assistance and support these software resources can furnish, it may be tentatively suggested that the students relying on the diagnostic tool were executing a different kind of participation in terms of their interpretative work with regard to the error and its replacement. Starting from studies on learning demonstrating that actively generated information is remembered better than presented information (see Crook 2002 for an overview), the students’ autonomous involvement in the production of a remedy with only minimal assistance from diagnostic tools may constitute such a constructive condition.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Daniel Persson Thunqvist, Per Linell, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Financial support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and The Swedish Research Council programme for the study of Learning and Memory in children and young adults, project “Learning, interaction, and the development of narrative knowing and remembering” is gratefully acknowledged.
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Cekaite, A. Collaborative corrections with spelling control: Digital resources and peer assistance. Computer Supported Learning 4, 319–341 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-009-9067-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-009-9067-7