Effects of online translation on morphosyntactic and lexical-pragmatic accuracy in essay writing in Spanish as a foreign language

The use of online translation (OT) is increasing as more pupils receive laptops from their schools. This study investigates OT use in two groups of Swedish pupils (ages 17-18) studying Spanish as an L3: one group (A) having free Internet access and the spelling and grammar checker of Microsoft Word, the other group (B) using printed dictionaries without Internet access. 112 Spanish essays were collected from the groups. Screencasts of 60 essay writings were recorded, and accompanied by a questionnaire and interviews to 13 pupils. The essays were analysed for morphological, syntactical and lexical accuracy. Significant differences between groups A and B were found for only a few error categories. Group B made a higher percentage of errors all-in-all, committed more mistakes regarding noun/adjective and noun/article agreement, whereas group A made more mistakes concerning verb mood, personal pronouns, and conjunctions. Many errors in group B can be explained by the fact that the pupils had no access to automatic corrective suggestions or automatic translation, as did group A. Flaws in OT can account for pronoun and syntactic errors in group A essays. The differences in correct use of verb mood and conjunctions are more difficult to explain and deserve further investigation.