Individual and Domain Adaptation in Sentence Planning for Dialogue

One of the biggest challenges in the development and deployment of spoken dialogue systems is the design of the spoken language generation module. This challenge arises from the need for the generator to adapt to many features of the dialogue domain, user population, and dialogue context. A promising approach is trainable generation, which uses general-purpose linguistic knowledge that is automatically adapted to the features of interest, such as the application domain, individual user, or user group. In this paper we present and evaluate a trainable sentence planner for providing restaurant information in the MATCH dialogue system. We show that trainable sentence planning can produce complex information presentations whose quality is comparable to the output of a template-based generator tuned to this domain. We also show that our method easily supports adapting the sentence planner to individuals, and that the individualized sentence planners generally perform better than models trained and tested on a population of individuals. Previous work has documented and utilized individual preferences for content selection, but to our knowledge, these results provide the first demonstration of individual preferences for sentence planning operations, affecting the content order, discourse structure and sentence structure of system responses. Finally, we evaluate the contribution of different feature sets, and show that, in our application, n-gram features often do as well as features based on higher-level linguistic representations

Integrating Discourse Markers into a Pipelined Natural Language Generation Architecture

Pipelined Natural Language Generation (NLG) systems have grown increasingly complex as architectural modules were added to support language functionalities such as referring expressions, lexical choice, and revision. This has given rise to discussions about the relative placement of these new modules in the overall architecture

Data-to-text generation with neural planning

In this thesis, we consider the task of data-to-text generation, which takes non-linguistic structures as input and produces textual output. The inputs can take the form of database tables, spreadsheets, charts, and so on. The main application of data-to-text generation is to present information in a textual format which makes it accessible to a layperson who may otherwise find it problematic to understand numerical figures. The task can also automate routine document generation jobs, thus improving human efficiency. We focus on generating long-form text, i.e., documents with multiple paragraphs. Recent approaches to data-to-text generation have adopted the very successful encoder-decoder architecture or its variants. These models generate fluent (but often imprecise) text and perform quite poorly at selecting appropriate content and ordering it coherently. This thesis focuses on overcoming these issues by integrating content planning with neural models. We hypothesize data-to-text generation will benefit from explicit planning, which manifests itself in (a) micro planning, (b) latent entity planning, and (c) macro planning. Throughout this thesis, we assume the input to our generator are tables (with records) in the sports domain. And the output are summaries describing what happened in the game (e.g., who won/lost, ..., scored, etc.). We first describe our work on integrating fine-grained or micro plans with data-to-text generation. As part of this, we generate a micro plan highlighting which records should be mentioned and in which order, and then generate the document while taking the micro plan into account. We then show how data-to-text generation can benefit from higher level latent entity planning. Here, we make use of entity-specific representations which are dynam ically updated. The text is generated conditioned on entity representations and the records corresponding to the entities by using hierarchical attention at each time step. We then combine planning with the high level organization of entities, events, and their interactions. Such coarse-grained macro plans are learnt from data and given as input to the generator. Finally, we present work on making macro plans latent while incrementally generating a document paragraph by paragraph. We infer latent plans sequentially with a structured variational model while interleaving the steps of planning and generation. Text is generated by conditioning on previous variational decisions and previously generated text. Overall our results show that planning makes data-to-text generation more interpretable, improves the factuality and coherence of the generated documents and re duces redundancy in the output document

Framework Architecture Design for Emergency Response System

Emergency management is essential to mitigate the effects of unforeseen situations. However, this task is complex due to the large amount of information and complex procedures to be handled. To address these challenges, it is necessary to have tools that allow flexible responses to problems classified as knowledge-intensive procedures (KIP). In this sense, we propose the design of a framework for an Emergency Response System (ERS) based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that integrates Adaptive Case Management (ACM) and Business Process Modelling (BPM). This framework is characterised by its interoperability with devices and collaborative systems, which allows the creation and association of content related to emergency management, thus improving usability. In addition, it is designed to be scalable, allowing the incorporation of new modular functionalities. Once the development of the framework has been completed, future lines of research will be opened for its validation and comparison with other ERS

OntoEng: A design method for ontology engineering in information systems

This paper addresses the design problem relating to ontology engineering in the discipline of information systems. Ontology engineering is a realm that covers issues related to ontology development and use throughout its life span. Nowadays, ontology as a new innovation promises to improve the design, semantic integration, and utilization of information systems. Ontologies are the backbone of knowledge-based systems. In addition, they establish sharable and reusable common understanding of specific domains amongst people, information systems, and software agents. Notwithstanding, the ontology engineering literature does not provide adequate guidance on how to build, evaluate, and maintain ontologies. On the basis of the gathered experience during the development of V4 Telecoms Business Model Ontology as well as the conducted integration of the related literature from the design science paradigm, this paper introduces OntoEng and its application as a novel systematic design method for ontology engineering

LTC Newsletter

Fall 2003https://ecommons.udayton.edu/ltc_newsletter/1001/thumbnail.jp

Writing process approach to enhance student´s writing skill in english in IV cycle of a atabanzha School (Bogotá).

La capacidad de escribir con eficacia permite a las personas para comunicarse. Es una parte central en el proceso de aprendizaje de los estudiantes y es una habilidad que requiere estrategias adecuadas que pueden ser adquiridos de forma gradual. Esta investigación se inscribe en el marco teórico de los conceptos principales de la escritura capacidad, los elementos más importantes para las actividades de escritura y diseño de algunos modelos del proceso de escritura diferentes para orientar la producción escrita de los estudiantes. Este estudio, basado en la Investigación-Acción, informa de los resultados del diseño, implementación y evaluación de una propuesta. Se llevó a cabo en una escuela pública con estudiantes de noveno grado que siguieron los pasos específicos del enfoque de proceso de la escritura: primer proyecto, el segundo proyecto, edición de pares y la versión final para escribir un párrafo narrativo breve. Su metodología incluye métodos teóricos como el análisis y la síntesis, histórica y lógica y la deducción y la inducción; métodos empíricos para diseñar e implementar la propuesta, y de recogida de datos se aplicaron tres instrumentos: Carta de la observación participante, cuestionario y una muestra de trabajos escritos de los estudiantes. Los resultados de este estudio indican la importancia de contar con un modelo de proceso de escritura con pasos definidos para guiar la escritura de los estudiantes en Inglés. La escritura es una parte relevante de aprendizaje de los estudiantes que debe ser desarrollada a través de actividades interesantes y agradables que implican los estudiantes en el proceso y para construir un hábito de la escritura.The ability to write effectively allows people to communicate. It is a central part in the students’ learning process and it is a skill that requires appropriate strategies that might be acquired gradually. This research registers in the theoretical framework the main concepts of the writing ability, the most important elements for design writing activities and some different writing process models to guide students’ written production. This study, based on Action Research, reports the results of the design, implementation and evaluation of a proposal. It was carried out in a public school with ninth graders who followed specific steps of the writing process approach: first draft, second draft, peer editing and final version to write a short narrative paragraph. Its methodology included theoretical methods as analysis and synthesis, historical and logical and induction and deduction; empirical methods to design and implement the proposal and for data collection three instruments were applied: participant observation chart, questionnaire and a sample of students’ written papers. The results of this study indicate the importance of having a writing process model with defined steps to guide students’ writing in English. Writing is a relevant part of students’ learning that must be developed through interesting and enjoyable activities which involve learners within the process and to build a writing habit

The impact of conjunctions on EFL university students' comprehension and summarization of expository texts

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2010This empirical study investigated the impact of conjunctions on EFL students' comprehension and summarization of an expository text. The study was motivated by the need for further understanding of the topic that was acknowledged by several researchers in the field of Applied Linguistics. The methodology adopted involved data collection from 12 participants from the Letras -Secretariado Executivo Bilíngue course at Universidade Federal de Santa Catariana who were all attending the fourth semester of the course. The activities performed by the participants consisted of a summary task, a reading comprehension task, a gap-filling task with conjunctions and a retrospective questionnaire. The participants reading times were recorded and subsequently used in the analysis. Data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively examining results from the summary task and the reading comprehension task, with data from the gap-filling task and the retrospective questionnaire contributing to the discussion of the results. This study's findings indicate a facilitative effect of conjunctions for both the summary task and the reading comprehension activity. Overall results suggest that conjunctions signaling potential may assist readers in the selection process of relevant information, which is crucial for successful reading and summarization practice.Este estudo empírico investigou o impacto das conjunções em na compreensão e no resumo de um texto expositivo. O estudo foi motivado pela necessidade de maior entendimento do tema, conforme reconhecido por vários pesquisadores do campo de Linguística Aplicada. A metodologia adotada envolveu a coleta de dados de 12 participantes do curso de Letras -Secretariado Executivo Bilíngue da Universidade Federal de Santa Catariana, todos frequentavam o quarto semestre do curso. As atividades realizadas pelos participantes consistiram em uma tarefa de resumo, uma tarefa de compreensão leitora, uma tarefa de preenchimento de lacunas com conjunções e um questionário retrospectivo. Registrou-se o tempo de leitura dos participantes e estes foram usados na análise subsequentemente. Os dados foram analisados tanto quantitivamente quanto qualitativamente, examinando-se os resultados da tarefa de resumo e compreensão leitora com os dados da tarefa de preenchimento de lacunas com conjunções e um questionário retrospectivo contribuindo com a discussão dos resultados. Os achados deste estudo indicam um efeito facilitador das conjunções tanto para a tarefa de resumo como para a atividade de compreensão de leitura. Os resultados gerais sugerem que o potencial facilitador das conjunções pode auxiliar os leitores na seleção de informação relevante, o que é vital para o sucesso nas práticas de leitura e resumo