時尚雙語:網絡軟件：寫作出錯多 軟件惹的禍

How might you drag a good writer's work down to the level of a lesser scribe? Try the spell-check button.

A study at the University of Pittsburgh indicates spell-check software may level the playing field between people with differing levels of language skills, hampering the work of writers and editors who place too much trust in the software.

In the study, 33 undergraduate students were asked to proofread a one-page business letter half of them using Microsoft Word with its squiggly red and green lines underlining potential errors. The other half did it the old-fashioned way, using only their heads.

Without grammar or spelling software, students with higher SAT verbal scores made, on average, five errors, compared with 12.3 errors for students with lower scores. Using the software, students with higher verbal scores reading the same page made, on average, 16 errors, compared with 17 errors for students with lower scores.

Dennis Galletta, a professor of information systems at the Katz Business School, said spell-checking software is so sophisticated that some have come to trust it too thoroughly. "It's not a software problem, it's a behavior problem," he said.

Microsoft technical specialist Tim Pash said grammar and spelling technology is meant to help writers and editors, not solve all their problems. The study found the software helped students find and correct errors in the letter, but in some cases they also changed phrases or sentences flagged by the software as grammatically suspicious, even though they were correct.

怎麼可以將傑出作家的作品降低到劣等作者的水平？點一下“拼寫檢查”鍵吧。

匹茲堡大學所作的一項研究表明拼寫檢查軟件會拉近不同的人在文字技巧上的差距，妨礙那些對其過分信任的作者和編輯的工作。

研究者們讓33名大學生校對一份長1頁的商業信函，其中半數學生使用微軟文字處理軟件，該軟件會在可能有誤的文字下面劃出紅色或綠色的波浪線；另一半則使用傳統的校對方式，也就是靠自己的頭腦來判斷正誤。

在不使用語法及拼寫軟件的情況下，那些SAT英文成績較好的學生平均出5個錯，而成績較差的學生平均出12.3個錯。用了軟件之後，英文成績較好的學生校讀同一篇東西平均要出16個錯，而成績較差的學生平均出17個錯。

凱茨商學院信息系統教授鄧尼斯· 加萊塔說，拼寫檢查軟件的先進性使一些人對它達到了迷信的程度。“這不是軟件問題，而是(人的)行爲問題。”

微軟的技術專家蒂姆·帕什說，語法及拼寫檢查技術能爲作者和編輯提供幫助，但並非萬能。研究發現，拼寫檢查軟件能幫助學生髮現並改正信函中的錯誤，但學生們有時也會被其誤導去改動那些被它標示爲語法有問題的正確語句。

注：SAT：Scholastic Assessment Test的簡稱，即“學習水平評估考試”，由美國大學委員會委託“教育考試服務機構”(Educational Testing Service)主持進行。美國沒有統一的大學入學考試，各大學通常以SAT成績作爲錄取標準。北外網院SAT留美英語培訓