Automatic detection and correction of syntax errors in tutoring systems for language instruction

This paper presents a method for the detection and correction of syntactic errors of competence, as produced by language learners using a tutoring system for second language instruction. The method is inspired by the realization that the correction of a syntactic error essentially is the translation of an incorrect sentence into a correct sentence. The method is based on explicit grammars for correct as well as incorrect sentences. These grammars are tuned to one another, so as to allow for a systematic mapping of structures describing incorrect sentences onto structures describing correct sentences.