Interactive visualization of syntactic structure assembly for grammar-intensive first- and second-language instruction

Understanding the grammatical structure of the target language is beneficial to certain categories of language learners, in particular to students learning to write in a language with many syntax-sensitive spelling rules, and to adult L1/L2 learners who prefer explicit rules. Moreover, grammar is an important body of knowledge in its own right. Two visual-interactive grammar instruction tools are presented that graphically support students in composing and transforming sentences. The structure of sentences is displayed in the form of easily interpretable syntactic trees that the student can assemble and modify interactively. The tools check on-line the grammatical well-formedness of the structures being manipulated. The programs are based on the new Performance Grammar formalism (e.g., Kempen & Harbusch, 2002). They have been implemented in JAVA and can run under most modern operating systems.