[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Sinclair_Stefan.jpg” caption=”Stefan Sinclair, associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies & Multimedia and co-creator of BonPatron. Photo by Peter Bailey.”]Struggling over avoir and etre? Elle ferme le fenetre? Ecris-moi un lettre? If it's all getting to be a bit much, maybe you need to join the many thousands of web users worldwide who have discovered BonPatron, a website that makes learning French easier.

Every month, more than 260,000 users from over 152 countries access BonPatron (averaging about 50,000 page views per day), something Stefan Sinclair of McMaster's Department of Communication Studies & Multimedia, and co-creator of BonPatron, couldn't be happier about.

In appearance, the BonPatron website seems similar to a spell-checker or translator. Simply copy and paste your document, paragraph, or sentence into the browser's “check edit” box, and at the click of a mouse, BonPatron will indicate errors of spelling and compute grammatical corrections for even complex French sentences — a task few web based linguistic tools can do at all, let alone accurately. One of the major benefits to language learners is the detailed explanation offered as to why a particular grammar point is incorrect.

For Sinclair, BonPatron symbolizes the kind of intelligent integration of technology into the Humanities that has always fascinated him. Specializing in French literature at the undergraduate and graduate levels, a synergy of his French background and his other passion, computers, was a personal and professional goal. His doctoral thesis, the creation of an acclaimed research tool for computerized content analysis named HyperPo, was the first major step in blending these interests.

The next was BonPatron, the result of a multi-year collaboration between Sinclair and Terry Nadasdi of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. Nadasdi came up with a preliminary concept and together they worked to refine the grammar correcting program, which originally launched in 2001. They have been constantly refining and expanding it ever since.

While BonPatron was originally conceived as a tool for secondary French language learners, it was soon embraced by many different levels of French speakers, explains Sinclair.

“Once we realized that Francophones were using the tool, we started to enhance it to suit more advanced needs as well. It turns out now that there are probably more Francophones using it than non-native speakers,” he says, adding that some use BonPatron to refresh their memory on tricky French grammar points.

BonPatron does more than help improve French language skills. It has also become an innovative research tool for Sinclair and Nadasdi, allowing them to compile data for studies on language use and misuse according to geographic location, and identify the most common grammatical mistakes made by both native and non-native French speakers.

They collect this information by indexing and evaluating both the text that users copy onto the site and the corrections made by the tool. As a result, they have been able to incorporate many advances into their pedagogical technology and contribute significantly to the broader scholarship of linguistics and French studies. And that can only be good news for future learners of French. Bravo BonPatron!