Pronunciation Modeling in Spelling Correction for Writers of English as a Foreign Language

We propose a method for modeling pronunciation variation in the context of spell checking for non-native writers of English. Spell checkers, typically developed for native speakers, fail to address many of the types of spelling errors peculiar to non-native speakers, especially those errors influenced by differences in phonology. Our model of pronunciation variation is used to extend a pronouncing dictionary for use in the spelling correction algorithm developed by Toutanova and Moore (2002), which includes models for both orthography and pronunciation. The pronunciation variation modeling is shown to improve performance for misspellings produced by Japanese writers of English.