Galletta’s results were significant; especially when you consider that the experiment was meant to show that spell-checkers were more effective for those with high verbal abilities. Instead, their results showed that both groups were worse with the spell-checker on.
So, how did we get so reliant on the spell-check? Galletta says it’s kind of like gambling: “Sometimes you hit the jackpot and most of the times you don’t.” A gambler’s fallacy is the idea that everyone thinks they’re luckier than the average Joe, and Galletta says that’s how it works in the mind of the person behind the spell-check button. “They trust the computer, and mixed in with laziness, they get a tendency to overlook the final check process where they read their own writing,” he says. “When they know there’s no spell-checker, they seem to be more careful.” Just like gamblers shouldn’t rely on their next big win to pay the rent, neither should our kids rely on the spell-check to edit their term paper.
Galletta says the point of all this isn’t to disable spell-checks, but to make sure kids know how to use that little “ABC” button responsibly. He says parents must explain to their children that the onus is on them to edit their work, with maybe a little bit of help from the trusty spell-check.
Roy Peter Clark, PhD, is Vice President of Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, and author of Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. He agrees with Galletta, saying that the root of the problem isn’t spell-check, it’s a lack of three basic behaviors: reading, writing and talking about how language works. “The more of that there is, the more literate the student will become. The less there is, the greater the temptation to rely upon a crutch which will not always be your friend,” he says.
Clark suggests that parents encourage their kids to use low technology solutions on occasion, such as writing by hand in a spiral notebook, “as a way of creating versatility to master many different expressions of your craft.” He also recommends printing out documents off of which to edit before even thinking about pressing “spell-check.” Most important, says Clark, is to point out the imperfections of the spell-check. If the red and green squiggles make your child’s essay look like a Christmas tree, play the “are you smarter than the computer?” game. Ask your child to identity where the computer failed to catch a mistake in his paper, or alerted him to a mistake that didn’t exist.
Though the technology has improved significantly since 1980, with spelling and grammar checkers learning how to sort out the context of words, it still isn’t as good as the human eye. And it never will be. Now, doesn’t that feel good?
By Johanna Sorrentino for Education.com
