I've just installed the 2018 spring update for Microsoft Windows 10 and noticed that Microsoft has added Grammar Tools support to Microsoft Edge. One of the features, which might be of interest to language learners, is the optional part-of-speech tagger, which allows users to highlight nouns, verbs and adjectives in different colors.
Unfortunately, it's only available for a limited number of languages and, as you'll see, not 100% reliable.
To give you an idea of its usefulness, I've tested it with the English, Spanish and German epubs.
(Since Microsoft Edge doesn't seem to have a dedicated Open Epub menu item, you'll have to open epubs via Open with > Microsoft Edge.)
Grammar Tools support added to Microsoft Edge
-
- Green Belt
- Posts: 404
- Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:21 pm
- Languages: German (N)
- x 807
Grammar Tools support added to Microsoft Edge
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
5 x
- tommus
- Blue Belt
- Posts: 957
- Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:59 pm
- Location: Kingston, ON, Canada
- Languages: English (N), French (B2), Dutch (B2)
- x 1937
Re: Grammar Tools support added to Microsoft Edge
Doitsujin wrote:To give you an idea of its usefulness, I've tested it with the English, Spanish and German epubs.
Thanks for that tip. It looks neat but I wonder about its usefulness. The colours seem to be quite distracting to normal reading. Most readers, even those at beginner's levels, will probably be able to identify nouns, verbs and adjectives about as easily and accurately as Edge can. Does anyone have specific suggestions as to how this feature can be helpful? I see that Edge can also split words into syllables which would be useful, but it would be far more useful if it also marked the accented syllable, which it apparently does not.
2 x
Dutch: 01 September -> 31 December 2020
● Watch 1000 Dutch TV Series Videos | : |
-
- Black Belt - 3rd Dan
- Posts: 3536
- Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
- Location: Scotland
- Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc - x 8811
- Contact:
Re: Grammar Tools support added to Microsoft Edge
It’s presumably targeted at linguistics students more than anyone else, and linguistics lecturers are probably trying to work out how this is going to affect their homework tasks...
1 x
-
- Green Belt
- Posts: 404
- Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:21 pm
- Languages: German (N)
- x 807
Re: Grammar Tools support added to Microsoft Edge
According to Microsoft:tommus wrote:Does anyone have specific suggestions as to how this feature can be helpful?
Some studies suggest that nouns capitalization aids reading comprehension. Maybe highlighting all nouns has the same effect for students with reading comprehension problems.Microsoft wrote:Learning Tools is designed to support students with dyslexia and dysgraphia in the classroom, but can support anyone who wants to make reading on their device easier.
Unfortunately the most-cited studies in this field are only available in German:
Gfroerer, Stefan/Günther, Hartmut/Bock, Michael: Augenbewegungen und Substantivgroßschreibung
Bock, Michael/Hagenschneider, Klaus/Schweer, Alfred: Zur Funktion der Groß- und Kleinschreibung beim Lesen deutscher, englischer und niederländischer Texte
For an English summary of these studies, see this website.
1 x
Return to “Language Programs and Resources”
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests