CorrectWriting: Open-Ended Question with Hints for Teaching Programming-Language Syntax

Abstract

Teaching students to construct correct statements in programming languages is an important part of introductory programming courses. While modern development environments highlight syntax errors, they do not stimulate thinking in grammatical terms to help the student understand and memorize syntax rules. To facilitate learning syntax, we developed CorrectWriting, a question-type plug-in for the popular LMS Moodle. It finds mistakes in token order and composition and detects typos, including missing and extraneous separators. Mistake messages use teacher-supplied token descriptions to show the grammatical role of each wrong token. Hints are provided about students' mistakes. CorrectWriting questions are actively used by the students of Volgograd State Technical University to prepare for classwork.