International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication

The Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication (한국인터넷방송통신학회)
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Evaluating Corrective Feedback Generated by an AI-Powered Online Grammar Checker

  • Moon, Dosik (Dept of English, Hanyang Cyber University)
  • Received : 2021.08.17
  • Accepted : 2021.08.27
  • Published : 2021.11.30
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Abstract

This study evaluates the accuracy of corrective feedback from Grammarly, an online grammar checker, on essays written by cyber university learners in terms of detected errors, suggested replacement forms, and false alarms.The results indicate that Grammarly has a high overall error detection rate of over 65%, being particularly strong at catching errors related to articles and prepositions. In addition, on the detected errors, Grammarly mostly provide accurate replacement forms and very rarely make false alarms. These findings suggest that Grammarly has high potential as a useful educational tool to complement the drawbacks of teacher feedback and to help learnersimprove grammatical accuracy in their written work. However, it is still premature to conclude that Grammarly can completely replace teacher feedback because it has the possibility (approximately 35%) of failing to detect errors and the limitationsin detecting errors in certain categories. Since the feedback from Grammarly is not entirely reliable, caution should be taken for successful integration of Grammarly in English writing classes. Teachers should make judicious decisions on when and how to use Grammarly, based on a keen awareness of Grammarly's strengths and limitations.

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