User Centered and Context Dependent Personalization Through Experiential Transcoding

Abstract-The pervasive presence of devices exploited to use and deliver entertainment text-based content can make reading easier to get but more difficult to enjoy, in particular for people with reading-related disabilities. The main solutions that allow overcoming some of the difficulties experienced by users with specific and special needs are based on content adaptation and user profiling. This paper presents a system that aims to improve content legibility by exploiting experiential transcoding techniques. The system we propose tracks users' behaviors so as to provide a tailored adaptation of textual content, in order to fit the needs of a specific user on the several different devices she/he actually uses

Hidden in plain sight:low-literacy adults in a developed country overcoming social and educational challenges through mobile learning support tools

Illiteracy is often associated with people in developing countries. However, an estimated 50 % of adults in a developed country such as Canada lack the literacy skills required to cope with the challenges of today's society; for them, tasks such as reading, understanding, basic arithmetic, and using everyday items are a challenge. Many community-based organizations offer resources and support for these adults, yet overall functional literacy rates are not improving. This is due to a wide range of factors, such as poor retention of adult learners in literacy programs, obstacles in transferring the acquired skills from the classroom to the real life, personal attitudes toward learning, and the stigma of functional illiteracy. In our research we examined the opportunities afforded by personal mobile devices in providing learning and functional support to low-literacy adults. We present the findings of an exploratory study aimed at investigating the reception and adoption of a technological solution for adult learners. ALEX© is a mobile application designed for use both in the classroom and in daily life in order to help low-literacy adults become increasingly literate and independent. Such a solution complements literacy programs by increasing users' motivation and interest in learning, and raising their confidence levels both in their education pursuits and in facing the challenges of their daily lives. We also reflect on the challenges we faced in designing and conducting our research with two user groups (adults enrolled in literacy classes and in an essential skills program) and contrast the educational impact and attitudes toward such technology between these. Our conclusions present the lessons learned from our evaluations and the impact of the studies' specific challenges on the outcome and uptake of such mobile assistive technologies in providing practical support to low-literacy adults in conjunction with literacy and essential skills training

NILC-Metrix : assessing the complexity of written and spoken language in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper presents and makes publicly available the NILC-Metrix, a computational system comprising 200 metrics proposed in studies on discourse, psycholinguistics, cognitive and computational linguistics, to assess textual complexity in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). These metrics are relevant for descriptive analysis and the creation of computational models and can be used to extract information from various linguistic levels of written and spoken language. The metrics in NILC-Metrix were developed during the last 13 years, starting in 2008 with Coh-Metrix-Port, a tool developed within the scope of the PorSimples project. Coh-Metrix-Port adapted some metrics to BP from the Coh-Metrix tool that computes metrics related to cohesion and coherence of texts in English. After the end of PorSimples in 2010, new metrics were added to the initial 48 metrics of Coh-Metrix-Port. Given the large number of metrics, we present them following an organisation similar to the metrics of Coh-Metrix v3.0 to facilitate comparisons made with metrics in Portuguese and English. In this paper, we illustrate the potential of NILC-Metrix by presenting three applications: (i) a descriptive analysis of the differences between children's film subtitles and texts written for Elementary School I and II (Final Years); (ii) a new predictor of textual complexity for the corpus of original and simplified texts of the PorSimples project; (iii) a complexity prediction model for school grades, using transcripts of children's story narratives told by teenagers. For each application, we evaluate which groups of metrics are more discriminative, showing their contribution for each task

Workshop Proceedings of the 12th edition of the KONVENS conference

The 2014 issue of KONVENS is even more a forum for exchange: its main topic is the interaction between Computational Linguistics and Information Science, and the synergies such interaction, cooperation and integrated views can produce. This topic at the crossroads of different research traditions which deal with natural language as a container of knowledge, and with methods to extract and manage knowledge that is linguistically represented is close to the heart of many researchers at the Institut für Informationswissenschaft und Sprachtechnologie of Universität Hildesheim: it has long been one of the institute’s research topics, and it has received even more attention over the last few years

Lexical simplification for the systematic support of cognitive accessibility guidelines

The Internet has come a long way in recent years, contributing to the proliferation of large volumes of digitally available information. Through user interfaces we can access these contents, however, they are not accessible to everyone. The main users affected are people with disabilities, who are already a considerable number, but accessibility barriers affect a wide range of user groups and contexts of use in accessing digital information. Some of these barriers are caused by language inaccessibility when texts contain long sentences, unusual words and complex linguistic structures. These accessibility barriers directly affect people with cognitive disabilities. For the purpose of making textual content more accessible, there are initiatives such as the Easy Reading guidelines, the Plain Language guidelines and some of the languagespecific Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines provide documentation, but do not specify methods for meeting the requirements implicit in these guidelines in a systematic way. To obtain a solution, methods from the Natural Language Processing (NLP) discipline can provide support for achieving compliance with the cognitive accessibility guidelines for the language. The task of text simplification aims at reducing the linguistic complexity of a text from a syntactic and lexical perspective, the latter being the main focus of this Thesis. In this sense, one solution space is to identify in a text which words are complex or uncommon, and in the case that there were, to provide a more usual and simpler synonym, together with a simple definition, all oriented to people with cognitive disabilities. With this goal in mind, this Thesis presents the study, analysis, design and development of an architecture, NLP methods, resources and tools for the lexical simplification of texts for the Spanish language in a generic domain in the field of cognitive accessibility. To achieve this, each of the steps present in the lexical simplification processes is studied, together with methods for word sense disambiguation. As a contribution, different types of word embedding are explored and created, supported by traditional and dynamic embedding methods, such as transfer learning methods. In addition, since most of the NLP methods require data for their operation, a resource in the framework of cognitive accessibility is presented as a contribution.Internet ha avanzado mucho en los últimos años contribuyendo a la proliferación de grandes volúmenes de información disponible digitalmente. A través de interfaces de usuario podemos acceder a estos contenidos, sin embargo, estos no son accesibles a todas las personas. Los usuarios afectados principalmente son las personas con discapacidad siendo ya un número considerable, pero las barreras de accesibilidad afectan a un gran rango de grupos de usuarios y contextos de uso en el acceso a la información digital. Algunas de estas barreras son causadas por la inaccesibilidad al lenguaje cuando los textos contienen oraciones largas, palabras inusuales y estructuras lingüísticas complejas. Estas barreras de accesibilidad afectan directamente a las personas con discapacidad cognitiva. Con el fin de hacer el contenido textual más accesible, existen iniciativas como las pautas de Lectura Fácil, las pautas de Lenguaje Claro y algunas de las pautas de Accesibilidad al Contenido en la Web (WCAG) específicas para el lenguaje. Estas pautas proporcionan documentación, pero no especifican métodos para cumplir con los requisitos implícitos en estas pautas de manera sistemática. Para obtener una solución, los métodos de la disciplina del Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (PLN) pueden dar un soporte para alcanzar la conformidad con las pautas de accesibilidad cognitiva relativas al lenguaje La tarea de la simplificación de textos del PLN tiene como objetivo reducir la complejidad lingüística de un texto desde una perspectiva sintáctica y léxica, siendo esta última el enfoque principal de esta Tesis. En este sentido, un espacio de solución es identificar en un texto qué palabras son complejas o poco comunes, y en el caso de que sí hubiera, proporcionar un sinónimo más usual y sencillo, junto con una definición sencilla, todo ello orientado a las personas con discapacidad cognitiva. Con tal meta, en esta Tesis, se presenta el estudio, análisis, diseño y desarrollo de una arquitectura, métodos PLN, recursos y herramientas para la simplificación léxica de textos para el idioma español en un dominio genérico en el ámbito de la accesibilidad cognitiva. Para lograr esto, se estudia cada uno de los pasos presentes en los procesos de simplificación léxica, junto con métodos para la desambiguación del sentido de las palabras. Como contribución, diferentes tipos de word embedding son explorados y creados, apoyados por métodos embedding tradicionales y dinámicos, como son los métodos de transfer learning. Además, debido a que gran parte de los métodos PLN requieren datos para su funcionamiento, se presenta como contribución un recurso en el marco de la accesibilidad cognitiva.Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Informática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: José Antonio Macías Iglesias.- Secretario: Israel González Carrasco.- Vocal: Raquel Hervás Ballestero

Using Systemic Functional Linguistics to Inform a Language Pedagogy in a Middle School English Classroom a Case Study

This qualitative case study analyzes how a middle school teacher used the tools of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and genre based pedagogy (GBP) to support linguistically and culturally diverse students in analyzing informational texts critically in the context of curricular and school reforms in the United States. Using a combination of ethnographic case study methods (Dyson, 1993; Davies, 1999; Merriam, 2005; Dyson & Genishi, 2005) and critical discourse analysis (Eggins, 1999; Fairclough, 1995) the teacher collected an extensive corpus of diverse data over a school year. Focused data collection consistent with case study methods included instructional materials, paper and electronic copies of students’ texts over time, videotapes and transcripts of classroom interactions and transcripts of interviews with the teacher and focal students. Data analysis included tracking the ways students discussed language and genre features of instructed informational texts, as well as using discourse analysis to analyze the specific genre register features included in students’ written products and making revisions to their expository texts. The findings indicate when introduced to an SFL metalanguage, students in this English class were able to discuss the language of school on a more functional level, shifting from their more structural conceptions of texts demonstrated at the beginning of the school year. In addition, students co-constructed a metalanguage for their own needs as writers, naming language systems in ways that made sense to them as developing writers. Finally, the student writers did gain more control in the academic language employed in writing, best understood with the tools of discourse analysis. The implications of this study suggest expansive language resources used to discuss academic literacy act as tools for students in learning to read and write instructional texts

Tackling genre classification: the case of HTML research articles

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondentePesquisas recentes sobre comunicação científica têm revelado que desde o final dos anos de 1990 o uso de periódicos acadêmicos passou da mídia impressa para o mídia eletrônica (Tenopir, 2002, 2003; Tenopir & King, 2001, 2002) e, conseqüentemente, há previsões de que por volta de 2010 cerca de 80% dos periódicos terão apenas versões online (Harnad, 1998). Todavia, essas pesquisas mostram também que nem todas as disciplinas estão migrando para a Internet com a mesma velocidade. Enquanto que áreas como as Ciências da Informação, Arquivologia, Web design e Medicina têm mostrado interesse e preocupação em entnder e explicar esse fenômeno, em Lingüística Aplicada, particularmente em Análise de Gênero, os estudos ainda são escassos. Neste trabalho, portanto, procuro investigar em que medida o meio eletrônico (Internet) afeta o gênero artigo acadêmico no seu processo de mudança da mídia impressa para a mídia eletrônica. Mais especificamente, examino artigos acadêmicos em HTML nas áreas de Lingüística e Medicina com vistas a verificar se esse hypertexto é um gênero novo ou não. A abordagem metodológica adotada nesta pesquisa deriva da proposta de Askehave e Swales (2001) e de Swales (2004), na qual o critéro predominante para a classificação de um gênero é o propósito comunicativo, o qual só pode ser definido com base em uma análise textual tanto quanto em uma análise contextual. Dessa forma, neste estudo foram coletados e analisados dados textuais e contextuais e os resultados de ambas análises revelam que o artigo acadêmico em HTML é um gênero novo, cujo propósito comunicativo é realizado por hiperlinks e portanto, esse gênero é profundamente dependente da mídia eletrônica

Fuzzy Coherence : Making Sense of Continuity in Hypertext Narratives

Hypertexts are digital texts characterized by interactive hyperlinking and a fragmented textual organization. Increasingly prominent since the early 1990s, hypertexts have become a common text type both on the Internet and in a variety of other digital contexts. Although studied widely in disciplines like hypertext theory and media studies, formal linguistic approaches to hypertext continue to be relatively rare. This study examines coherence negotiation in hypertext with particularly reference to hypertext fiction. Coherence, or the quality of making sense, is a fundamental property of textness. Proceeding from the premise that coherence is a subjectively evaluated property rather than an objective quality arising directly from textual cues, the study focuses on the processes through which readers interact with hyperlinks and negotiate continuity between hypertextual fragments. The study begins with a typological discussion of textuality and an overview of the historical and technological precedents of modern hypertexts. Then, making use of text linguistic, discourse analytical, pragmatic, and narratological approaches to textual coherence, the study takes established models developed for analyzing and describing conventional texts, and examines their applicability to hypertext. Primary data derived from a collection of hyperfictions is used throughout to illustrate the mechanisms in practice. Hypertextual coherence negotiation is shown to require the ability to cognitively operate between local and global coherence by means of processing lexical cohesion, discourse topical continuities, inferences and implications, and shifting cognitive frames. The main conclusion of the study is that the style of reading required by hypertextuality fosters a new paradigm of coherence. Defined as fuzzy coherence, this new approach to textual sensemaking is predicated on an acceptance of the coherence challenges readers experience when the act of reading comes to involve repeated encounters with referentially imprecise hyperlinks and discourse topical shifts. A practical application of fuzzy coherence is shown to be in effect in the way coherence is actively manipulated in hypertext narratives.Hyperteksti on yleisnimi digitaaliselle tekstityyppille joka rakentuu yleensä suhteellisen lyhyistä, lukijan tekemien valintojen mukaan järjestyvistä osista. Hypertekstit yleistyivät 1990-luvun alussa erityisesti Internetin vaikutuksesta, ja tänä päivänä suuri osa tietokoneen ruudulta luettavista teksteistä onkin hypertekstejä. Hypertekstien piirteitä on tutkittu viimeisten 20 vuoden aikana erityisesti hypertekstiteorian ja mediatutkimuksen oppialoilla, mutta niiden kielitieteellinen tutkimus on monelta osin edelleen alkuvaiheessa. Tutkimus tarkastelee koherenssin eli tekstin eheyden rakentumista hyperteksteissä ja erityisesti hypertekstitarinoissa. Koherenssilla tarkoitetaan lukijalähtöistä kokemusta tekstin rakenteellisesta mielekkyydestä, eli lukijan vaikutelmaa tekstin eri osien kuulumisesta yhteen mielekkäänä kokonaisuutena. Hypertekstin osalta koherenssimuodostuksen keskeinen ongelma liittyy hyperlinkkien viittaussuhteiden epätarkkuuteen, epäsuoran vuorovaikutustilanteen dynamiikkaan ja tekstin pirstaleisen rakenteen synnyttämään kokemukseen temaattisesta epäjatkuvuudesta. Aihetta tarkastellaan tekstilingvistiikan, diskurssianalyysin, pragmatiikan ja narratologian teorioiden lähtökohdista. Tutkimus esittelee hyperlinkkien viittaussuhteiden tulkintaan liittyvät eri mekanismit primäärimateriaalista nostetuin esimerkein, korostaen erityisesti teoriamallien soveltuvuuden eroja hypertekstien ja perinteisten lineaaristen tekstien välillä. Tutkimuksen tuloksena todetaan että hypertekstuaalinen tekstityyppi on synnyttämässä uuden lukutavan, joka edellyttää koherenssin käsitteen uudelleenarviointia. Tämä uusi koherenssin erityistyyppi, jota tutkimuksessa kutsutaan nimellä fuzzy coherence eli sumea koherenssi, perustuu toistuvien pienten koherenssiongelmien hyväksymiseen osana lukukokemusta. Erityisesti hypertekstikirjallisuuden piirissä sumeaa koherenssia voidaan hyödyntää myös kerronnallisena keinona