Computer-assisted composing process in business writing

There are many existing writing tools in the market such as WhiteSmoke and Business-in-a-Box. However most of these tools only provide mechanic tools such as spelling checker and grammar checker. Second language writers (L2) tend to translate directly from first language (L1) to English. It is difficult to stop this process because this is the nature of L2 writers. Currently, the writing documents will be proofread by someone who is fluent in English (lecturers or translators). The proofreading process is difficult and costly. This paper discusses an approach for developing a computer-assisted writing tool for non-native writers. Sample of sentences in business letters have been collected. Sentences according to the type of letters will be classified and the result of this study will be stored into an electronic thesaurus. This thesaurus will provide words for writers during writing where the word appears are related to the environment of sub-sentences. The software that will be developed will assist L2 writers to choose appropriate words during the preparation of the document.