CALICO Software ReportCALICO Journal, Volume 16 Number 2, pp. 197-212Antidote 98 Reviewer: Jack Burston - Monash UniversityProduct at a Glance
Product type: French Grammar/Spell Checker
Language-level: Intermediate to Advanced Level
Media format: One CD-ROM
Computer platforms: Windows 3.xx / 95 / 98 / NT 4 MAC-OS 7 / 8
Documentation: On-line Help & User's Manual (100 pages)
Introduction
Antidote is a relatively new entry into the French grammar/spell checker arena. As with the well known Le Correcteur 101, it is a product of French-speaking Quebec. The latest version of Le Correcteur itself is extensively evaluated in this volume of the CALICO Journal. The purpose of this software report is to put Antidote through the same series of tests to see how well it performs in comparison.. The producers of Antidote themselves are very much aware that LeCorrecteur is the benchmark against which to be measured and in their advertising claim superiority on tests conducted by two magazines PC Mag (October 1997) and Protgez-vous (February 1998). In addition, glowing reports are cited from four other magazine reviews: PC Expert (October 1998), MacWorld France (January 1998), SVM Science & Vie Micro (July-August 1997), and Clic (February 1997), not to mention a half dozen testimonials from satisfied customers. With such credentials, one might well ask why Antidote is being reviewed yet again in the pages of CALICO. The answer is twofold. Firstly, while they are very well placed to assess the technological features of a product, popular computer magazines rarely have the expertise needed to make qualified judgements about highly specialized content areas such as those embodied in a grammar checker. Secondly, all of the above reviews and testimonials presuppose use by native speakers of French. How well Antidote performs within the context of foreign language students remains to be determined. General Description
Summary of features
Antidote is actually a suite of four interrelated tools consisting of a grammar checker plus a dictionary, verb conjugator, and reference grammar. The grammar checker is claimed to handle over 800 cases of agreement and to be sensitive to the occurrence of homonyms (e.g. vert/verre), paronyms (e.g. minent/imminent), anglicisms (e.g. email) and regionalisms (e.g. dbarbouillette). The norm used to determine grammatical correctness is none other than the venerable Le Bon Usage (M. Grevisse and A. Goosse). The on-line dictionary is said to contain 100,000 entries incorporating 350,000 definitions drawn from the Dictionnaire de l'Acadmie franaise and nearly 40 other sources. The verb conjugator boasts an inventory of 8000 verbs and 400,000 conjugated forms. The reference grammar, also inspired by Le Bon Usage, is an in-house production which treats over 250 topics. In addition, Antidote provides a built-in link to a third party multimedia dictionary called Le Visuel. This needs to be purchased separately and was not tested as part of this review. Antidote can be used as a stand-alone text editor or accessed directly within certain word processors. On the Windows platform, this includes Word (Ver 6,7,97) and WordPerfect (ver 6.1). On the Macintosh, Word (Ver 6,98) and Claris Works (Ver 4,5) are supported. Moreover, Antidote is compliant with Word Services and be accessed from programs, such as Eudora Pro, which adhere to this protocol. In stand-alone mode, Antidote can work with imported documents in RTF or simple text (ASCII/AINSI) format. It is to be noted that the user interface in Antidote is totally in French. When operated in stand-alone mode, Antidote displays a menu bar at the top of the screen from which its various functions can be accessed. In addition to the menu bar, all Antidote tools are available though keyboard shortcuts.Fichier (File), dition (Edit), Fentre (Window) and Aide (Help) menus provide standard text editing facilities. The Outils menu makes available the grammar checker, dictionary, verb conjugator, and reference grammar. When the grammar checker is called up, the text editing window is reduced in size and a separate analysis window is opened below it. By default, the grammar checker automatically analyzes the whole sentence within which the text cursor is located. It is also possible to check sequences below the sentence level by highlighting the desired elements, whereupon Antidote will limit its analysis to the selection. When grammar checking, the Diagnostic menu may be used to display an explanation of an error, a corresponding grammar rule, the part of speech/grammatical function of any word or a full sentence analysis. Access to the dictionary, verb conjugator, and reference grammar is context sensitive. Whatever word the text cursor is on (or whatever portion of text is highlighted) serves as a default lookup. Automatic lookup works as well from within Antidote's pop-up windows, thus providing hypertext links between the various tools. Dictionary searches identify exact matches first. This is followed by a list of phonetically similar words. As would be expected, the dictionary allows for the addition of new words and definitions. Optionally, Antidote offers the possibility of doing analogical lexical searches, i.e. a list of all dictionary entries containing the search item.

When integrated into a compatible word processor, Antidote adds five toolbar buttons to the screen, the first four correspond to its primary functions and the last a link to Le Visuel:

These may be kept as a separate toolbar menu or dragged over to the word processor toolbar. The link to Le Visuel may be deleted if it is not needed. Installation (and deinstallation) of the Antidote toolbar is accomplished by simply opening a special word processor file containing the necessary macros. As happens with its own stand-alone text editor, when the grammar checker is called up, the word processor window remains on screen so that both the original document and the analysis window are visible.

As can be observed, when Antidote is activated its menu bar appears at the top of the screen above that of the word processor and a window displaying the selected tool is placed at the bottom of the screen (all windows can, of course be repositioned as desired). In the case of the grammar checker, the analysis window itself is split into two panels, a large one at the top shows the corrected sentence and a small one at the bottom displays the original text. Clicking on any underlined correction pops up an explanation of the mistake. Clicking on the Corriger button accepts the correction and replaces the corresponding text in the original document. The first double arrow button at the right of the window moves the cursor to the next underlined correction in the sentence. The second double arrow button moves the cursor to the next sentence to be checked. A button marked Taire allows specific error alerts to be turned off (words affected are still underlined). The Ajouter button is used to add unrecognized words to the personal dictionary. At the far left of the correction window, just above the bottom panel which displays the original text, is a small triangle. Clicking on this gives the user a complete syntactic analysis of the sentence being checked. Lastly, toolbar buttons are included within the correction window to allow direct access to the dictionary, verb conjugator and reference grammar.
The grammar checker in Antidote can be configured to operate with various degrees of control over an impressive range of parameters. Most notable are the multiple options affecting sensitivity to stylistic constraints, regionalisms and anglicisms. Documentation
Antidote comes with extensive on-line help and a well illustrated printed User's Manual of over 100 pages. The latter is called (somewhat tongue in cheek) a Posologie, the subtitle of which is equally playful: Le remde tous vos mots. For the language specialist, the user's manual even includes a five page bibliography of its lexicographical and grammatical sources.
Evaluation
Technological features
From a technological point of view, Antidote certainly merits the acclaim it has received. For this review it was tested on a Pentium/166 running Windows 95 and a Mac 8500/120 running OS 8.1 and performed flawlessly on both platforms. Installation was a breeze and, as has become standard practice on Windows software, an equally effective Uninstall program is also included. Speed of operation was lightning fast on both computers. Screen layout is clear and uncluttered. Icon functions are transparent and the user interface is consistent and highly intuitive. So much so, in fact, that few of the system's pull-down menus are likely to see much use. Likewise, on the Windows platform, right mouse-button menu links largely eliminate the need for keyboard shortcuts. Compared to Le Correcteur, Antidote offers both a simpler user interface and tighter integration of its suite of tools, most notably in the hypertext links it provides. So, too, Antidote can be accessed from within an external word processor. Unlike Le Correcteur , there is no need to close a document and switch out of the word processor in order to run the proofing tools. Whereas Le Correcteur can directly import word processor documents in the formats it supports (e.g. Word, WordPerfect AmiPro;Claris Works), Antidote only works with RTF and simple text files when used in stand-alone mode. This, however, is not likely to cause much inconvenience since, with the exception of AmiPro, Antidote integrates well with most popular word processors. In fact, users of these word processors would have little reason to access Antidote in stand-alone mode. Stand-alone operation, however, can be important when using a grammar checker in an academic environment where RTF and simple text files provide a lowest common denominator for the submission of student work. In view of the formatting problems with imported simple text files reported in the accompanying review of Le Correcteur, special testing was undertaken to check for similar difficulties in Antidote. Le Correcteur (as does Antidote) interprets hard returns as sentence delimiters and these have to be removed for correction to operate properly. The main problem with Le Correcteur is that, even when hard returns have been deleted, the program sometimes continues to stop its analysis at their previous location in the text. To check how well Antidote handled imported simple texts, a document was created in various Windows and Mac versions of Word and WordPerfect and saved as simple text. These were then imported directly into Antidote, were hard returns were removed. While no problems were encountered with Antidote itself, incompatibilities did occur with the encoding of accented characters when importing texts across Windows and Mac platforms. In order for accented characters to display properly, simple texts intended for correction on a Windows platform need to be saved in a form compatible with that environment and the same applies, of course, in the other direction for texts intended for correction on a Mac platform. The character code conversion itself is a simple process and the addition to Antidote of an inbuilt Windows/Mac accent converter would be a most welcome enhancement for institutional users.
While on the topic of accented characters, it is worthwhile pointing out a shortcoming which Antidote shares with Le Correcteur: the inability to conveniently access diacritics from the keyboard. Being intended for native French speakers, it is assumed that the program will be used with a French keyboard installed. On a Mac this is not problematic since users with QWERTY keyboards can access accented letters through a standard set of key combinations. In the absence of such an interface on the Windows platform, users must resort to entering AINSI code or cutting and pasting from a character map to obtain accented letters. When Antidote is accessed from within a text editor, the typing of accented letters is handled by whatever means is made available by the word processor; but only for text entered in the word processing window itself. Once the user begins working with the Antidote dictionary or conjugation tools, word processor key combinations cease to be operative. Word searches are sensitive to the presence of diacritics and, though the program will list phonetically similar items, typing in words without their required accents can require the user to wade through a dozen or more entries to locate what is actually being sought. This annoyance turns to real frustration if Antidote is used in stand-alone mode, as there is no direct text editing support for the typing of diacritics. Granted, one can blame Windows for not providing anything better than charmap.exe to handle accented characters and hope some future version will remedy this weakness. In the meantime, internal Antidote support for the typing of diacritics on a QWERTY keyboard would be much appreciated.
Compared to Le Correcteur, Antidote offers fewer auxiliary facilities. It cannot do fully automatic corrections or lexical scans. The lack of automatic correction, i.e. one which analyzes an entire text and makes changes without interactive confirmation, in reality is not much of a loss since the accuracy of such correction leaves much to be desired. With typical student compositions, Le Correcteur allows over two-thirds of all errors to go undetected. Of those it does spot, only about 25% are actually corrected, the remainder are simply tagged as requiring attention (Mogilevski 1998). The absence of lexical scanning, however, is to be regretted in Antidote. Lexical scanning is a very simple procedure involving the creation of a list of all items in a text which cannot be found in the dictionary (or verb conjugator). As a pedagogical device it is very useful in focusing student attention on the simplest, and alas most frequent, kinds of mistakes: verbal misconjugations, irregular nominal forms, spelling, accents, and sundry typos. Because of the high frequency of errors in student compositions, compared to that of a native French speaker, grammar checkers frequently can do no better than to provide a partial analysis of a sentence. Eliminating the kinds of mistakes picked up by a lexical scan before a grammatical analysis is attempted can greatly improve the ability of a grammar checker to complete its task and, thus to better identify and correct any remaining errors. For student usage at least, Antidote really needs to add lexical scanning to its tool box.
Another of Le Correcteur's useful tools lacking in Antidote is an on-line thesaurus. This is offset somewhat by the ability of Antidote to do analogical lexical searches. Likewise, in terms of the number of lexical entries, the internal dictionary included with Antidote rivals Le Correcteur's add-on Petit Robert Electronique facility. Also, the reference grammar in Antidote, which has no counterpart in Le Correcteur, offers clear and concise context sensitive explanations. Grammar correction
Whatever its technological niceties and auxiliary features, what really matters above all else in a grammar checker is its ability to successfully detect and rectify mistakes. In so doing, it must not only accurately identify the nature of an error but must also avoid falsely finding mistakes were none exist. This is a tall task when dealing with native speakers and an even greater challenge when dealing with the written work of language learners. In evaluating the effectiveness of a grammar checker, it is important to recognize from the outset the current limits of the state of the art. As powerful as modern desktop computers have become, it still remains beyond their ability to support grammar checkers capable of semantic analysis. Neither Le Correcteur nor Antidote has any understanding of the meaning of the sentences it analyzes, as both make clear in their user's guide. One important consequence of this is that semantically based mistakes are largely immune to detection. For instance, no grammar checker today is capable of judging the appropriateness of pass-compos versus imparfait tense usage. Similarly, they are insensitive to errors in anaphoric reference such as Depuis 1890 le monde fait des films. Certaines sont merveilleuses. Likewise, misuse of determiners inevitably goes undetected. For example, both Le Correcteur and Antidote see nothing wrong with sentences like J'ai cass ma jambe. Surprisingly perhaps, the semantic blind spot also affects preposition usage. Stereotypical student errors like J'ai rencontr Pierre sur le train trigger no alerts. The reason for all this, of course, is that semantic deviance is a matter of contextual congruence. Given the right context, semantically anomalous sentences can become perfectly acceptable utterances. Demonstration files
Notwithstanding semantic limitations, quite a wide range of morphosyntactic mistakes are amenable to computer identification and remediation. To demonstrate this, both Le Correcteur and Antidote supply with their program a file of sentences illustrating the kinds of errors they can correct. Naturally, each grammar checker scores 100% with its own demonstration materials. As a first step in assessing the relative effectiveness of Le Correcteur and Antidote, each was tested against the demonstration file of its competitor. In Table 1 below, corrected errors include mistakes that were either replaced by correct forms or identified in such a way to make correction straightforward (e.g. clicking on the dictionary to find an unrecognizable word, making subject/verb agreement in accordance with the grammatical analysis given). Flagged errors were those which, though marked, required the user to independently decide what corrective action to take. Misidentified errors were those in which the source of the mistake was wrongly attributed. Since these were misleading, they were not counted as successful detections. False corrections were those which were wrongly diagnosed as errors.Table 1 Demonstration File Analysis

N/Err Detected MisidentifiedUndetected False

Corrected Flagged Total

Correcteur183 64% 24% 88% 1% 11% 1

Antidote82 73% 15% 88% 4% 8% 0

Out of a total of 183 errors in the sentences of the Antidote demo file, Le Correcteur successfully detected 163, i.e. 88%. Of these, 64% were directly corrected and 24% were flagged. The Antidote demo file also contained 15 regionalisms and slang expressions which Le Correcteur either passed over in silence or detected without being able to identify. In addition, it also made one false correction and incorrectly analyzed the nature of two errors (1%). On the other hand, Antidote made one questionable correction in its own example sentences, insisting that the feminine of professeur is professeure. While many hitherto masculine-only forms are in the process of acquiring feminine counterparts, the latter is a regionalism not yet in common usage. The demonstration file for Le Correcteur contained only 82 errors, of which 72 , i.e. 88% were successfully detected by Antidote. Of these, 73% were directly corrected and 15% flagged. No false corrections were made, but the nature of 3 errors (4%) was misidentified. While Antidote missed 3 lexical items which Le Correcteur tagged as problematic, it also issued 6 alerts of its own about possible vocabulary problems unnoted by Le Correcteur. In addition, Antidote turned up 5 minor punctuation errors (missing commas) which Le Correcteur passed over in silence. Thus all things considered, though the margin of difference is not very great, the larger number of direct corrections, absence of false corrections, additional lexical alerts and punctuation corrections tilt the balance in favor of Antidote. Native Speaker Texts
In reviewing Le Correcteur, a test was undertaken to determine how well it could perform with an error-free French literary text: "Le Capitaine Fracasse" by Thophile Gautier. The result of the correction of the first seven sentences (271 words) was one partial analysis, eight possibly misleading comments and thirteen false corrections. Response time was also very slow, Le Correcteur taking for example over 6 minutes to analyse the following sentence:
Deux tours rondes, coiffes de toits en teignoir, flanquaient les angles d'un btiment, sur la faade duquel deux rainures profondment entailles trahissaient l'existence primitive d'un pont-levis rduit l'tat de sincure par le nivelage du foss, et donnaient au manoir un aspect fodal, avec leurs chauguettes en poivrire et leurs girouettes queue d'aronde. When subjected to the same test, Antidote produced three partial analyses, made one possibly misleading comment and eleven false corrections. Unlike Le Correcteur, Antidote offers no control over the amount of time allowed to perform an analysis; but then none is needed as its operation is virtually instantaneous. The longest any sentence took to analyze was four seconds. Table 2 Literary Text Analysis

Partial Analyses Dubious Comments False Corrections Maximum Time per Sentence

Correcteur1 8 13 6 minutes

Antidote3 1 11 4 seconds

A further test was undertaken to compare the performance of Le Correcteur and Antidote on more discursive native French prose. The text chosen was a newspaper article (1481 words) Justice pour la justice by Robert Badinter (Le Monde, 8 February 1997). A representative sentence is given below:
Depuis des mois, les autorits franaises avaient fait voeu de silence avec, il est vrai, quelques justes raisons: toute dclaration manant de Paris dclenche, quelle qu'elle soit, les vieux rflexes de rejet de l'ingrence colonialiste et la France sert de repoussoir d'un extrme l'autre de l'chiquier politique algrien. Since few users are likely to accept waiting more than a minute to analyse a single sentence, however complex, maximum correction time was set to a more realistic 60 seconds for Le Correcteur. The results of this test are summarized in Table 3.Table 3 Prose Text Analysis

Partial Analyses Dubious Comments False Corrections

Correcteur12 6 6

Antidote7 3 8

As can be observed, when constrained to a 60 second analysis, Le Correcteur left 12 sentences partially analyzed, made 6 dubious comments and 6 false corrections. In comparison Antidote, operating in 4 seconds or less, left 7 sentences partially analysed, made 3 dubious comments and 8 false corrections. Though making slightly more false corrections, Antidote's superior ability to completely analyse complex sentences with fewer dubious comments and unrivalled speed give it a clear advantage over Le Correcteur when dealing with native French texts. Student compositions
Being a proofing tool intended for use by native speakers of French, Antidote, like Le Correcteur, is sensitive to a range of subtleties unlikely to be found in the essays of language learners, e.g.
Mes amies se sont faites prendre par la pluie.
Les enfants ont tout chamboul, tels une tornade. On the other hand, in dealing with student compositions, grammar checkers are confronted with such a quantity of anomalies that it becomes difficult to determine the syntactic structure needed to correct even basic mistakes. Moreover, very often the nature of student errors defies all attempts at analysis. The following example illustrates the kind of sentences which are all too frequently encountered:
Il fallait que nous avons promis notre mre de ne pas se sparer. Inevitably, such deviant forms produce incomplete analyses, and with only a partial result to go by, comprehensive and accurate error identification and remediation is simply not within the power of any native-speaker grammar checker to provide. In the absence of algorithms specifically modelled on student interlanguage1, it needs to be realized that the application of programs such as Le Correcteur and Antidote to the writing of language learners is largely restricted to the detection and correction of purely morphosyntactic errors: noun gender, adjective agreement, verbal conjugation, spelling and the like. Notwithstanding, as most French teachers are painfully aware, this is an area much in need of remediation in student essays (cf Mogilevski and Burston2).

When put to the test against 40 second-year advanced level student essays, containing some 1262 morphosyntactic mistakes, Le Correcteur managed to successfully detect an impressive 91% of the error types it is capable of recognizing. In order to assess how well Antidote performs with student compositions, it was tested against the same database3. The comparative results are summarized in Table 4.Table 4 Student Compositions

N/Err Detected MisidentifiedUndetected False

Corrected Flagged Total

Correcteur1262 74% 17% 91% 7% 2% 49

Antidote1262 77% 5% 82% 11% 7% 28

As with the demonstration files, Antidote again outperforms Le Correcteur in terms of the number of errors actually corrected: 77% compared to 74%. However, this advantage is offset by far fewer non-corrected error detections: only 5% compared to 17%. Moreover, Le Correcteur with 91%, compared to 82% for Antidote, demonstrates a substantially higher total detection rate. It is to be noted, however, that this achievement comes at the expense of many more false corrections, 49 compared to 28. Le Correcteur lets pass fewer mistakes undetected, 2% compared to 7%. Likewise, it misidentifies the source of errors less frequently (7%) than does Antidote (11%). Based on over-all results, Le Correcteur would have to be judged the better performer with student compositions.
Antidote would have fared better with student writing were it not for its misidentification of some fairly obvious spelling errors (e.g. premiere, videttes, emplois) and its failure to recognize spelling mistakes in sentence initial words, which in every case were incorrectly attributed to unknown proper nouns. Also when operating in grammar correction mode, Antidote, unlike Le Correcteur, does not offer lexical alternatives to misspelled words. It either automatically makes a correction or informs the user that it doesn't recognize the word. By being more cautious and flagging such errors with a list of possible substitutes, Le Correcteur relies on the user to make the ultimate decision and thereby avoids lexical miscorrections. While automatic correction of spelling errors may be advantageous for native speakers, language learners are better served by Le Correcteur's approach. As noted above, this is exactly what Antidote does when a word is queried in dictionary lookup mode. Extending the presentation of lexical alternatives to grammar correction mode is an improvement which Antidote would do well to adopt.
The under-utilisation of Antidote's lexical resources to handle misspellings in grammar correction mode contrasts markedly with the program's remarkable attention to vocabulary usage. Although Le Correcteur flags a fair number of lexical difficulties, Antidote is in a class by itself when it comes to alerting the user to the possible misuse of words: homonyms, paronyms, regionalisms, and especially anglicisms. It issued a total of 236 vocabulary alerts in the student compositions. Table 5 illustrates the most common and useful of these:Table 5: Vocabulary Usage

actuellement/rellement franais/Franais, anglais/Anglais opportunit/occasion

anniversaire/fteimmigrant/migrant original/originel

apport/amener/emmener nombre/chiffrepeut-tre/peut tre

ces/sesprogramme/mission tche/ tache

When giving vocabulary warnings, Antidote provides a short definition of the terms in question. Should this not prove sufficient, a full dictionary lookup is only a mouse click away. While vocabulary items like those above are extremely relevant to language learners, some warnings are much less so: e.g. ton/taon/thon; anglais/anglet; jeune/jene;matin/mtin. Fortunately, Antidote allows its sensitivity to lexical items to be controlled in a number of ways, so it is possible to fine tune this feature or turn it off completely. Furthermore, used as a pedagogical device, lexical alerts can provide an interesting and contextually sensitive means of vocabulary acquisition. Conclusion
French speakers are much better served by grammar checkers than are their counterparts in other languages. Thanks especially to the Quebecois interest in the field, francophones - be they native speakers, teachers, or foreign language learners - have at their disposition proofreading tools which are state-of-the-art. Le Correcteur and Antidote are both excellent products, as demonstrated by their performance on the very demanding tests to which they have be subjected here. However, in assessing the relative merits of these programs, it is clear that Antidote has now become the new benchmark against which to measure French grammar checkers. Its user interface is a model of simplicity and efficiency. In terms of operating speed, it leaves all competition in the dust. When used with native-speaker texts, it is more successful than Le Correcteur in analyzing complex prose. With all texts, it consistently makes more automatic corrections; though in doing so it is also more prone than Le Correcteur to misidentify the source of errors. When used to correct student compositions, Le Correcteur has the advantage of detecting a substantially greater number of morphosyntactic errors than does Antidote. In part this follows from the fact that Le Correcteur misidentifies the source of errors less frequently. On the other hand, many of Antidote's misidentifications would be transparent to a student, and easily rectifiable through use of its on-line dictionary. Notwithstanding, this area remains a weak spot in need of attention. False correction, too, is matter of particular concern when these programs are used with language learners, and in this regard Le Correcteur is more problematic than Antidote. Given the competition between these two products, and the obvious efforts which have gone into their development to date, one would expect to see needed improvements in forthcoming versions.Summary
Scaled rating (1 low-5 high)
Implementation possibilities: 4
Pedagogical features (relative to evaluation parameters): 4
Use of computer capabilities: 4
Ease of use (student / teacher): 5
Over-all evaluation: 4
Value for money: 5Technical Details
Developer/distributor: Druide Informatique
Address: 5515, chemin de la Cte-Saint-Luc
Montral, Qubec H3X 2C6
Canada
Phone: +1-514-484-4998
Fax: +1-514-484-7709
Email: info@druide.com (sales: virginie@druide.com)
WWW: www.druide.com Hardware requirements
PC: 8036+
RAM: 8 Mb (12 Mb recommended)
Windows 3.xx / 95 / 98 / Win NT 4 OS 7 /8

MAC: 68020 / Power-PC
RAM: 4 Mb (available memory)

Hard disk space: 15 Mb

Price
Individual copy: $130 CAN
Site license: 25 stations $1200 / 50 stations $2200 / 100 stations $4000 CAN Reviewer Information
Jack Burston is Senior Lecturer in French, Department of French Studies, Monash University. The author teaches a post-graduate course in CALL and supervises M.A. and Ph.D. candidates in this area. He is particularly interested in authoring languages and systems for courseware development and is currently Software Review Editor of the CALICO Journal. Reviewer Contact
Department of French Studies
Monash University
Clayton Victoria
Australia 3168 Phone: (613) 9905-2222
Fax: (613) 9905-2137
Email: jack.burston@arts.monash.edu.au 1 It is interesting to note that the producers of both Antidote and Le Correcteur are presently working on a version of their product for English speaking learners of French. 2 "Morphosyntactic Accuracy in the Written Compositions of Advanced University Level Students of French", Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, to appear. 3 I would like to thank Eugene Mogilevski for providing me with the database of student essays used in his evaluation of Le Correcteur.

References
"Druide informatique Antidote 98 -- Un correcteur brillant", PC Expert, no 77, October 1998, p. 82."Test. Logiciels de correction: qui la faute?", Protgez-vous, February 1998, p.18-21."Les 50 coups de coeur de la rdaction -- Antidote", Macworld France, no 15, January 1998, p. 74."Outils d'aide la rdaction", PC Mag, no 114, October 1997, p. 82-88."Antidote 1.1.2 -- Un correcteur efficace et rapide", SVM Science & Vie Micro, no 151, July-August 1997, p. 111."Le Petit Druide -- Une premire mondiale : un dictionnaire lectronique descriptif et normatif pour la francophonie!", Clic, no 14, February 1997, p. 7-8.