Joint Modeling of Content and Discourse Relations in Dialogues

We present a joint modeling approach to identify salient discussion points in spoken meetings as well as to label the discourse relations between speaker turns. A variation of our model is also discussed when discourse relations are treated as latent variables. Experimental results on two popular meeting corpora show that our joint model can outperform state-of-the-art approaches for both phrase-based content selection and discourse relation prediction tasks. We also evaluate our model on predicting the consistency among team members' understanding of their group decisions. Classifiers trained with features constructed from our model achieve significant better predictive performance than the state-of-the-art.Comment: Accepted by ACL 2017. 11 page

Reading Recovery Teacher Understandings About Language and Early Literacy Acquisition

This study investigated Reading Recovery teacher understandings about language and early literacy acquisition by applying a constructivist grounded theory design. Participants were Reading Recovery teachers working across three varied districts in Massachusetts (N=33). The purpose of the study was to engage Reading Recovery teachers in surveys, focus groups, interviews, and observations to understand the degree to which Reading Recovery teacher participants value varied student language patterns. Addressing biases faced upon school entry by children who speak differently than their teachers is essential. When students are identified for early literacy intervention, an asset-based frame is critical to ensure accelerated growth. The guiding question was, “What do Reading Recovery teachers understand about using language/linguistic diversity as an asset in early literacy acquisition?”. What might be learned, in terms of Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Practices (CLSP), from Reading Recovery teachers was also discussed. The theory that emerged is that engaging in reflective processes, communicating theoretical understandings regarding reciprocity, working to expand oral language flexibility, and fostering the growth of collective expertise specifically to support linguistic diversity were all necessary. The observation portion of this study found evidence of Reading Recovery teachers working to be culturally and linguistically responsive to all children including multilingual, multidialectal, and monolingual students. Five examples included in the discussion are 1. Daily explicit instruction around literary structures 2. Personalized instruction 3. Positioning the child as a writer: allowing the syntax and meaning of a child to drive conversations and determine the written message 4. Never invalidating a child\u27s syntax or semantics while fostering syntactic flexibility 5. Embedding a Told and then restating that unknown word in a meaningful phrase. Implications for pedagogical practice included working within a CLSP framework to deepen educator understandings of how to honor and teach into linguistic diversity as a strength and develop more robust theoretical and practical collective expertise on the matter. Implications for further research include deepening the connection between Reading Recovery and CLSP. Finally, in the larger field of education the work of culturally sustaining practices and linguistically sustaining practices may need to be discussed as both individual and intertwined issues

Dialogue as Data in Learning Analytics for Productive Educational Dialogue

This paper provides a novel, conceptually driven stance on the state of the contemporary analytic challenges faced in the treatment of dialogue as a form of data across on- and offline sites of learning. In prior research, preliminary steps have been taken to detect occurrences of such dialogue using automated analysis techniques. Such advances have the potential to foster effective dialogue using learning analytic techniques that scaffold, give feedback on, and provide pedagogic contexts promoting such dialogue. However, the translation of much prior learning science research to online contexts is complex, requiring the operationalization of constructs theorized in different contexts (often face-to-face), and based on different datasets and structures (often spoken dialogue). In this paper, we explore what could constitute the effective analysis of productive online dialogues, arguing that it requires consideration of three key facets of the dialogue: features indicative of productive dialogue; the unit of segmentation; and the interplay of features and segmentation with the temporal underpinning of learning contexts. The paper thus foregrounds key considerations regarding the analysis of dialogue data in emerging learning analytics environments, both for learning-science and for computationally oriented researchers

Studying web 2.0 interactivity: a research framework and two case studies

With more than one third of the world’s population being online, the Internet has increasingly become part of modern living, giving rise to popular literature that often takes a teleological and celebratory perspective, heralding the Internet and Web 2.0 specifically, as an enabler of participation, democracy, and interactivity. However, one should not take these technological affordances of Web 2.0 for granted. This article applies an interaction framework to the analysis of two Web 2.0 websites viewed as spaces where interaction goes beyond the mere consultation and selection of content, i.e., as spaces supporting the (co)creation of content and value. The authors’ approach to interactivity seeks to describe websites in objective, structural terms as spaces of user, document, and website affordances. The framework also makes it possible to talk about the websites in subjective, functional terms, considering them as spaces of perceived inter-action, intra-action and outer-action affordances. Analysis finds that both websites provide numerous user, document, and website affordances that can serve as inter-action or social affordances

Exploring figurative language recognition: a comprehensive study of human and machine approaches

Treballs Finals de Grau de Llengües i Literatures Modernes. Facultat de Filologia. Universitat de Barcelona. Curs: 2022-2023. Tutora: Elisabet Comelles Pujadas[eng] Figurative language (FL) plays a significant role in human communication. Understanding and interpreting FL is essential for humans to fully grasp the intended message, appreciate cultural nuances, and engage in effective interaction. For machines, comprehending FL presents a challenge due to its complexity and ambiguity. Enabling machines to understand FL has become increasingly important in sentiment analysis, text classification, and social media monitoring, for instance, benefits from accurately recognizing figurative expressions to capture subtle emotions and extract meaningful insights. Machine translation also requires the ability to accurately convey FL to ensure translations reflect the intended meaning and cultural nuances. Therefore, developing computational methods to enable machines to understand and interpret FL is crucial. By bridging the gap between human and machine understanding of FL, we can enhance communication, improve language-based applications, and unlock new possibilities in human-machine interactions. Keywords: figurative language, NLP, human-machine communication.[cat] El Llenguatge Figuratiu (LF) té un paper important en la comunicació humana. Per entendre completament els missatges, apreciar els matisos culturals i la interacció efectiva, és necessària la capacitat d'interpretar el LF. No obstant això, els ordinadors tenen dificultats per entendre la LF a causa de la seva complexitat i ambigüitat. És crític que els ordinadors siguin capaços de reconèixer el LF, especialment en àrees com l'anàlisi de sentiments, la classificació de textos i la supervisió de les xarxes socials. El reconeixement precís del LF permet capturar emocions i extreure idees semàntiques. La traducció automàtica també requereix una representació precisa del LF per reflectir el significat previst i els matisos culturals. Per tant, és rellevant desenvolupar mètodes computacionals que ajudin els ordinadors a comprendre i interpretar el LF. Fer un pont entre la comprensió humana i màquina del LF pot millorar la comunicació, desenvolupar aplicacions de llenguatge i obrir noves possibilitats per a la interacció home-màquina. Paraules clau: llenguatge figuratiu, processament del llenguatge natural, interacció home-màquina

Language Ideologies, Choices, and Practices in Eastern African Hip Hop

Hip hop emerged as a musical and cultural force during the late 1970s in the United States and has followed a global trajectory ever since. Artists and fans around the world filter North American hip hop styles through their own local musical, social, and linguistic environments, making hip hop a highly visible (and audible) example of the intersection of global and local youth cultures. Young people in Tanzania and Malawi, neighboring African countries in the eastern region of the continent, are no exception to this creative process. Both countries have vibrant hip hop communities that draw on youth knowledge of international, as well as local and national, hip hop music and culture. Youth in the two countries listen to the same popular American stars and hold similar ideas about and interpretations of their lives and music. Yet, Tanzanian and Malawian hip hop scenes diverge in the social and cultural significance of local musical practices, which include performing as well as dancing, dressing, and talking about rap music. This tension between the similar and the different serves as an analytic backdrop for what follows

Diachronic and/or synchronic variation? The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in L2 French.

A majority of the early research in Second Language Acquisition focused on diachronic variation in the learners’ interlanguage (IL), that is, differences in the IL linked to a supposed increase in knowledge between two points in time (cf. Tarone 1988). The last decade has seen an increase in studies combining a diachronic perspective with a synchronic one, that is, where variation in production is seen as the consequence of individual differences among learners (gender, extraversion, learning strategies, attitudes, motivation, sociobiographical variables linked to the language learning experience and the use of the target language (TL)). In this perspective, non-native-like patterns are not automatically assumed to be the result of incomplete knowledge, but other possible causes are taken into consideration such as temporary inaccessibility of information in stressful situations or even a conscious decision by the L2 user to deviate from the TL norm