With Alan Turing in mind, I'm going to get a wee bit controversial here.
My hunch is current grammar checking works like a spell checker. It finds things it has been programmed to find that are bad grammar and proposes a fix – just like a spell checker. Have spell checkers helped students spell better? Hard to know would be my guess. Certainly there are fewer misspelled words in student papers, but my guess is because the software fixes it for them, not because they've learned to spell better. Grammar checking software will highlight bad grammar and students will command the software to fix it, thus resulting in better grammar, but whether or not they LEARN better grammar is not clear.
Let me suggest to folks on this list that someday (very soon now) our computers will prepare all our communications for us and grammar (and language for that matter) will no longer be an issue. Yikes I hear you say… but how many of us can calculate square roots? Not the same you say!! Yes it is, if you ask me. The only difference is computers have not yet be programmed to do this… but that is coming. It is only a matter of time before Word's little green line turns into an automatic fixer.
Remember that the little devices we are all carrying around these days that we call "smart phones" aren't phones at all. They are supercomputers. What will the world be like when we all are carrying around supercomputers connected to each other?
P.S. Using Turnitin in a non-punitive way sounds better to me, but whether or not students learn more this way – well I just don't know.
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology
Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
phone: 607-436-2701
fax: 607-436-3677
Twitter: greenbjb
"Ignorance is curable,
stupidity lasts forever"