The development of second language writing with the help of grammar checkers in Spanish as an L2: the effectiveness of CorrectMe

This article presents some preliminary results on the effectiveness of a software, a prototype of spell and grammar checker especially designed for learners of Spanish as an L2. The aim of the software is to provide students with specific information about their mistakes at the time of writing. This tool, which is called CorrectMe, allows the users of the software to contrast their own writing with a large normative corpus that will provide information on the frequency of words and pairs of words, also known as bigrams in a corpus of correct Spanish. From a methodological point of view there is a focus-on-form that should call students attention on specific mistakes and potential mistakes, providing them with a chance to self-correct their writing at the spot. In order to analyse the effectiveness of CorrectMe, two Spanish language learner corpora have been processed, containing 8.994 and 13.018 words, respectively corresponding to levels B1 and C1 according to the CEFR.