Hierarchical RNN with Static Sentence-Level Attention for Text-Based Speaker Change Detection

Speaker change detection (SCD) is an important task in dialog modeling. Our paper addresses the problem of text-based SCD, which differs from existing audio-based studies and is useful in various scenarios, for example, processing dialog transcripts where speaker identities are missing (e.g., OpenSubtitle), and enhancing audio SCD with textual information. We formulate text-based SCD as a matching problem of utterances before and after a certain decision point; we propose a hierarchical recurrent neural network (RNN) with static sentence-level attention. Experimental results show that neural networks consistently achieve better performance than feature-based approaches, and that our attention-based model significantly outperforms non-attention neural networks.Comment: In Proceedings of the ACM on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 201

Towards Neural Speaker Modeling in Multi-Party Conversation: The Task, Dataset, and Models

Neural network-based dialog systems are attracting increasing attention in both academia and industry. Recently, researchers have begun to realize the importance of speaker modeling in neural dialog systems, but there lacks established tasks and datasets. In this paper, we propose speaker classification as a surrogate task for general speaker modeling, and collect massive data to facilitate research in this direction. We further investigate temporal-based and content-based models of speakers, and propose several hybrids of them. Experiments show that speaker classification is feasible, and that hybrid models outperform each single component.Comment: In Proceedings of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), 201

Social, cultural, and political constructions of Corporate Social Responsibility in China: A study of business discourses in the Fiberhome Technologies Group

Abstract This thesis focuses on corporate social responsibility (CSR), a vital issue for both business and academic researchers, and examines how the reality of CSR is socially constructed within a Chinese social, political and cultural context. In particular, this thesis examines understanding and practice of the discourse of CSR within a large Chinese State-owned enterprise (SOE), FiberHome Technologies Group (FHTG). It explains how cultural and political factors contribute to the production and development of CSR discourse in China. It also scrutinises social practices of corporate social performance, especially employer-employee relationships, within FHTG by investigating both the actual knowledge of CSR that FHTG publishes on its headquarters’ homepage and the research participants’ interpretation of management construction of CSR discourse. Website documents produced by FHTG’s headquarters from 2006 to 2008 were collected and 33 participants (managers and employees) from five headquarters’ departments and six subsidiary companies were interviewed for this study. Participants were selected according to the extent of their work experience with at least one year of work experience being a minimum requirement. Website information and interview transcripts were analysed using Fairclough’s (1992) three-step approach to CDA to examine how the knowledge of CSR is constructed and reproduced by organisational members and how it shapes the ways in which the social reality of Chinese CSR is constructed. The thesis argues that the reality of Chinese CSR is shaped by the Chinese cultural system of Confucianism focusing on human virtues, as well as government adoption of some Western CSR initiatives. The research findings suggest a hybrid form of business management model by embracing both a Chinese management and a Western management style into business practice. The Chinese management style constructs a discourse of Confucian entrepreneurship which forms a distinctive feature of Chinese CSR practices, focusing on the development of human virtues that guide companies to a new way of improving their CSR performance. Also, the adoption of a Western management style exhibits a giving discourse that considers the interests of stakeholder groups including employee, government, community and society. In addition, the research findings suggest that employees’ understanding of CSR is shaped by FHTG’s social performance and is similar to the management construction of CSR discourse. Their definition of CSR involves three key aspects: social harmony, employee welfare, and economic benefits. This thesis contributes to knowledge from three perspectives: theoretical, methodological and managerial. Theoretically, this thesis contributes to the development of Chinese CSR theory. This theory promotes economic productivity as a means of achieving social wellbeing and employee wellbeing. Methodologically, this thesis offers a benchmark for the study of CSR discourse by using a face-to-face interview method which has previously rarely been used in research on CSR in a Chinese context. Managerially, this thesis provides a guide for government officials and business managers to design the strategies based on their own countries’ cultural, political, economic, social and institutional frameworks

Error Analysis on English Writing of Chinese Mongolian Students Based on Automated Scoring System

A Corpus plays an important role in English writing. Corpus can provide students with rich authentic materials. The automated scoring system which is set up based on the use of corpus, such as the automated scoring system of Ju Ku, can grade the composition and make an analysis of students’ English writing to help them correct their writing errors. In this paper, an investigation of the writing problems of Mongolian students is carried out to make an analysis of the errors that students are easy to make in an attempt to improve Mongolian students’ writing abilities

The Influence of Learners’ Motivation and Attitudes on Second Language Teaching

Learners’ motivation and attitudes have great impact on the second language learning and teaching. This thesis first introduces the theories concerning learners’ affective factors and then gives a brief definition of motivation and attitude .In order to reveal the co-relation between motivation and attitude of language learners and the second language teaching, the research designs two questionnaires to investigate the students’ learning attitude and the attribution for success or failure. Through discussion of the two surveys, the teaching tips in respect of a learner’s motivation and attitude are recommended with the purpose of eliminating students’ negative emotional reactions as well as developing students’ autonomous learning abilities. In summary, this paper intends to improve the teaching effect by means of exploring the influences that a learner’s motivation and attitude bring about to foreign language teaching

An Empirical Research on Ethnic Minority Students of Preparatory Education Under The Influence of Nonintellectual Factors

Nonintellectual factors play an important role in the second language learning. Nonintellectual factors mainly include a person’s motivation, personality, willpower, anxiety, self-confidence, etc.. The purpose of this study is to discover the function of nonintellectual factors in English teaching. This paper first gives a brief introduction to the background information of the research, and then a definition of nonintellectual factors and the elements nonintellectual factors contain are presented. After that the data from two separate surveys concerning about learners’ willpower and anxiety are collected aiming to find out the causes of these phenomena and make a conclusion. Eventually some suggestions of the teaching reform from the perspective of teaching objectives, teaching content, teaching methods and teaching evaluation are proposed with the purpose of improving the teaching effects