Tuesday, October 4, 2011

CCC: Chapter 19/ McGee & Ericsson: The Politics of the Program MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian

Citation: McGee, Tim, and Patricia Ericsson. "The Politics of the Program: MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian." Computers and Composition 19 (2002): 453-70. Print. 

    THE INVISIBLE GRAMMARIAN

MS Word thinks he is smarter than me. HUH! Yeah right! My friend, yes on occasions.  Remember the spell checker joke? Eye halve a spelling chequer, the poem goes. “It came with my pea sea. Although I read it months ago, I had never really considered the effects of MS Word’s Grammar Checker.While I’m indebted to the spell checker, when I see those green squiggles, I immediately check for the correction and amend it. I can’t help it. But, on those infrequent occasions, I think I know what I’m doing, and the correct change is almost never what the MSGC recommends to me.  I fought with my PC while I was writing my thesis.  You would have thought I knew nothing about sentence structure or paper formation.  The computer cannot comprehend rules by the instructor.  I see benefit in teaching our students to turn off the Grammar Checker, but I also see these articles as urging us to do more.  The MSGC is handicapping my students.  How dare them try to write a paper on their own without spell check!!! This is part of the reason why my students struggle with writing.  The computer has no spell check during an SOL test.  I cannot say that I hate it, because I don't.

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