Syntax-Driven Machine Translation as a Model of ESL Revision

Abstract In this work, we model the writing revision process of English as a Second Language (ESL) students with syntax-driven machine translation methods. We compare two approaches: tree-to-string transformation

Exploring the effectiveness of ChatGPT-based feedback compared with teacher feedback and self-feedback: Evidence from Chinese to English translation

ChatGPT,a cutting-edge AI-powered Chatbot,can quickly generate responses on given commands. While it was reported that ChatGPT had the capacity to deliver useful feedback, it is still unclear about its effectiveness compared with conventional feedback approaches,such as teacher feedback (TF) and self-feedback (SF). To address this issue, this study compared the revised Chinese to English translation texts produced by Chinese Master of Translation and Interpretation (MTI) students,who learned English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL), based on three feedback types (i.e., ChatGPT-based feedback, TF and SF). The data was analyzed using BLEU score to gauge the overall translation quality as well as Coh-Metrix to examine linguistic features across three dimensions: lexicon, syntax, and cohesion.The findings revealed that TF- and SF-guided translation texts surpassed those with ChatGPT-based feedback, as indicated by the BLEU score. In terms of linguistic features,ChatGPT-based feedback demonstrated superiority, particularly in enhancing lexical capability and referential cohesion in the translation texts. However, TF and SF proved more effective in developing syntax-related skills,as it addressed instances of incorrect usage of the passive voice. These diverse outcomes indicate ChatGPT's potential as a supplementary resource, complementing traditional teacher-led methods in translation practice

Natural Language Processing Applications in Business

Increasing dependency of humans on computer-assisted systems has led to researchers focusing on more effective communication technologies that can mimic human interactions as well as understand natural languages and human emotions. The problem of information overload in every sector, including business, healthcare, education etc., has led to an increase in unstructured data, which is considered not to be useful. Natural language processing (NLP) in this context is one of the effective technologies that can be integrated with advanced technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning, to improve the process of understanding and processing the natural language. This can enable human-computer interaction in a more effective way as well as allow for the analysis and formatting of large volumes of unusable and unstructured data/text in various industries. This will deliver meaningful outcomes that can enhance decision-making and thus improve operational efficiency. Focusing on this aspect, this chapter explains the concept of NLP, its history and development, while also reviewing its application in various industrial sectors

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

“L1 interference in l2 writing skills in a1 students at the UTC language center”

In recent years, English has become more common in Ecuadorian society. The ability to communicate through writing is a unique characteristic of the human species and writing has helped people communicate with other human beings. The main aim of this research was to determine the strategies to enhance writing skills to avoid Spanish (L1) interference in English (L2) writing skills in A1 ‘C’ English students at the UTC Language Center of Latacunga. A written work elaborated by the students was applied and a written partial exam was used as an instrument. A written test was applied to thirty-three university students whose average age is between 20 and 25 years old, from the Language Center of the Technical University of Cotopaxi of English level A1 'C'. There were 18 women and 15 men. In addition, a rubric was applied to evaluate each piece of writing in aiming to recognize the interference errors of the students. In this research, descriptive and diagnostic methods are used because they help us to analyze and describe the veracity of the problem; the interference of the mother tongue in writing skills. For this purpose, the main mother tongue interferences in writing structures between Spanish and English were identified through a bibliographic review. The results obtained through the application of written work, it was determined that most students have errors in punctuation, capitalization, spelling, sentence structure, and word order. Therefore, strategies are useful in the writing process such as: modeled writing, shared writing, guided writing, and independent writing. Some authors talk about these strategies, but it is considered that the most important strategy for teaching writing is guided writing. In addition, this research provides information to teachers and learners about L1 interference in L2 writing skills and the strategies and methods that are useful in the writing learning process. Thus, students created imprecise texts, lacking coherence and cohesion.En los últimos años, el inglés se ha vuelto más común en la sociedad ecuatoriana. La capacidad de comunicarse a través de la escritura es una característica única de la especie humana y la escritura ha ayudado a las personas a comunicarse con otros seres humanos. El objetivo principal de esta investigación fue determinar las estrategias para potenciar las habilidades de escritura para evitar la interferencia del español (L1) en las habilidades de escritura del inglés (L2) en estudiantes de inglés A1, paralelo ¨C¨ en el centro de idiomas UTC de Latacunga. Se aplicó un trabajo escrito elaborado por los estudiantes y se utilizó como instrumento un examen parcial escrito. Se aplicó una prueba escrita a treinta y tres estudiantes universitarios cuyo promedio de edad se encuentra entre los 20 y 25 años, del Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi de nivel de inglés A1 paralelo 'C'. Fueron 18 mujeres y 15 hombres. Además, se aplicó una rúbrica para evaluar cada escrito con el fin de reconocer los errores de interferencia de los estudiantes. En esta investigación se utilizaron métodos descriptivos y de diagnóstico porque nos ayudan a analizar y describir la veracidad del problema; la interferencia de la lengua materna en la escritura. Para ello, se identificaron las principales interferencias de la lengua materna en las estructuras de escritura entre el español y el inglés a través de una revisión bibliográfica. Los resultados obtenidos a través de la aplicación del trabajo escrito, se determinó que la mayoría de los estudiantes tienen errores de puntuación, mayúsculas, ortografía, estructura de la oración y orden de las palabras. Por lo tanto, en el proceso de escritura son útiles estrategias como: la escritura modelada, la escritura compartida, la escritura guiada y la escritura independiente. Algunos autores hablan de estas estrategias, pero se considera que la estrategia más importante para la enseñanza de la escritura es la escritura guiada. Además, esta investigación proporciona información a los profesores y a los alumnos sobre la interferencia de la L1 en las habilidades de escritura de la L2 y sobre las estrategias y métodos que son útiles en el proceso de aprendizaje de la escritura. De esta manera, los alumnos crearon textos imprecisos, carentes de coherencia y cohesión

Computational Models of Problems with Writing of English as a Second Language Learners

Learning a new language is a challenging endeavor. As a student attempts to master the grammar usage and mechanics of the new language, they make many mistakes. Detailed feedback and corrections from language tutors are invaluable to student learning, but it is time consuming to provide such feedback. In this thesis, I investigate the feasibility of building computer programs to help to reduce the efforts of English as a Second Language (ESL) tutors. Specifically, I consider three problems: (1) whether a program can identify areas that may need the tutor’s attention, such as places where the learners have used redundant words; (2) whether a program can auto-complete a tutor’s corrections by inferring the location and reason for the correction; (3) for detecting misusages of prepositions, a common ESL error type, whether a program can automatically construct a set of potential corrections by finding words that are more likely to be confused with each other (known as a confusion set). The viability of these programs depends on whether aspects of the English language and common ESL mistakes can be described by computational models. For each task, building computational models faces unique challenges: (1) In highlighting redundant areas, it is difficult to precisely define “redundancy” in a computer’s language. (2) In auto-completing tutors’ annotations, it is difficult for computers to correctly interpret how many writing problems were addressed during revision. (3) In confusion set construction, it is difficult to infer which words are more likely confused with the given word. To address these challenges, this thesis presents different model alternatives for each task. Empirical experiments demonstrate the degrees of success to which computational models can help with detecting and correcting ESL writing problem

Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity

Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs), most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure

VALICO-UD: annotating an Italian learner corpus

Previous work on learner language has highlighted the importance of having annotated resources to describe the development of interlanguage. Despite this, few learner resources, mainly for English L2, feature error and syntactic annotation. This thesis describes the development of a novel parallel learner Italian treebank, VALICO-UD. Its name suggests two main points: where the data comes from—i.e. the corpus VALICO, a collection of non-native Italian texts elicited by comic strips—and what formalism is used for linguistic annotation—i.e. Universal Dependencies (UD) formalism. It is a parallel treebank because the resource provides for each learner sentence (LS) a target hypothesis (TH) (i.e., parallel corrected version written by an Italian native speaker) which is in turn annotated in UD. We developed this treebank to be exploitable for interlanguage research and comparable with the resources employed in Natural Language Processing tasks such as Native Language Identification or Grammatical Error Identification and Correction. VALICO-UD is composed of 237 texts written by English, French, German and Spanish native speakers, which correspond to 2,234 LSs, each associated with a single TH. While all LSs and THs were automatically annotated using UDPipe, only a portion of the treebank made of 398 LSs plus correspondent THs has been manually corrected and released in May 2021 in the UD repository. This core section features also an explicit XML-based annotation of the errors occurring in each sentence. Thus, the treebank is currently organized in two sections: the core gold standard—comprising 398 LSs and their correspondent THs—and the silver standard—consisting of 1,836 LSs and their correspondent THs. In order to contribute to the computational investigation about the peculiar type of texts included in VALICO-UD, this thesis describes the annotation schema of the resource, provides some preliminary tests about the performance of UDPipe models on this treebank, reports on inter-annotator agreement results for both error and linguistic annotation, and suggests some possible applications

Corpus Linguistics : developing a Multianalysis Text Tool

This thesis presents an overview of Corpus Linguistics, highlighting how the advancements in the field have influenced English Language Teaching. I aim to contribute with a new tool that can be used in the English classroom. It allows both teachers and students to build a corpus based on news articles available online and it incorporates a variety of analysis tools, such as a part of speech tagger and a syntactic parser that allow users to visualize the syntactic relations in sentences. Furthermore, the front end of the software is in website format to make it as accessible as possible.Esta tesis presenta una introducción al campo de la lingüística de Corpus, mostrando cómo los avances en la materia han influido en la enseñanza del inglés. Mi objetivo es contribuir aportando una nueva herramienta que pueda ser usada en el aula, que permite a profesores y alumnos construir un corpus basado en noticias extraídas de internet. La herramienta incorpora varios tipos de análisis de texto, como por ejemplo el etiquetado gramatical y el analizador sintáctico, que permite al usuario visualizar las relaciones sintácticas en forma de árbol. Además, el frontal del programa es en formato web, haciéndolo más accesible.Aquesta tesi presenta una introducció al camp de la lingüística de Corpus, mostrant com els avenços en la matèria ha influenciat en l'ensenyança de l'anglès. El meu objectiu és contribuir aportant una nova eina per a l'aula, que permeti a professors i alumnes construir un corpus basat en notícies extretes d'internet. L'eina incorpora una varietat de tipus d'anàlisis de text, com per exemple la desambiguació lèxica i l'analitzador sintàctic, que permet a l'usuari visualitzar les relacions sintàctiques en forma d'arbre. A més a més, el frontal del programa és en format web, fent-lo així més accessible