Using track changes and word processor to provide corrective feedback to learners in writing

This study investigated the effect of computer‐mediated corrective feedback types in an English as a foreign language (EFL) intact class over time. The participants were 64 English majors who were assigned randomly into three treatment conditions that gave and received computer‐mediated corrective feedback while writing (track changes, word processor, and track changes and word processor) and one control group that neither gave nor received writing corrective feedback. Students sat to a pre‐test (week 1), immediate post‐test (week 8) and delayed post‐test (week 12) in writing. Results showed decrease in mean error and mean feedback in students' writing performance related to correcting 11 major error types on immediate and delayed post‐tests, indicating that there was a significant effect for feedback type in favour of the group that used a combination of track changes and word processor. There was also a significant effect for the computer‐mediated corrective feedback over the control group. Moreover, results showed that both mean error and mean feedback decreased significantly from pre‐test to post‐test (week 1–week 8), indicating that overall, there was a significant change over time.     

Corpus-based research on English word recognition rates in primary school and word selection strategy

Acquiring vocabulary is important when studying English, as it assists in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In this paper, we develop an English webpage corpus (EWC) and create a word frequency list using web crawler technology. By comparing EWC word lists with the British National Corpus (BNC), we find that the BNC word frequency list possesses the feature of timeliness. We also explore primary school students’ English word recognition rates by comparing the word frequency lists of several corpora, including EWC, BNC, SUBTLEX-US, and Subtitle Corpus of Children’s BBC (CBBC). The results show that the word recognition rates for primary school children are relatively low in both general language and specific language register. Motivated by the experiment results, we finally propose some word-selection strategies for compiling English textbooks for Chinese primary school students.     

The impact of computer‐based instruction on the development of EFL learners' writing skills

The current study investigated the application and effectiveness of computer assisted language learning (CALL) in teaching academic writing to Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners by means of Microsoft Word Office. To this end, 44 sophomore intermediate university students majoring in English Language and Literature at an Iranian university who had enrolled in a course called Advanced Writing were randomly divided into two groups. As a pre‐test, a pen‐and‐paper writing task was given to both groups at the beginning of the semester. The control group including 24 male and female students was taught based on traditional approach while the experimental group including 20 male and female students was taught based on CALL. At the end of one semester, a pen‐and‐paper writing task was given to both groups. The results of the post‐test revealed that the students who were exposed to computer‐based instruction outperformed their counterparts in terms of using appropriate articles, tense, plural forms and spelling. Moreover, the students in the experimental group produced paragraphs of higher quality. The findings of this study confirmed the efficacy of computer‐based instruction in the development of EFL learners' writing skills.     

Promoting contextual vocabulary learning through an adaptive computer‐assisted EFL reading system

The study developed an adaptive computer‐assisted reading system and investigated its effect on promoting English as a foreign language learner‐readers' contextual vocabulary learning performance. Seventy Taiwanese college students were assigned to two reading groups. Participants in the customised reading group read online English texts, each of which was customised by the developed system to offer immediate and repeated meetings with previously encountered unknown words, while participants in the typical reading group read online texts without control on unknown word recurrence. After the 4‐week online reading treatment, the two groups of learners were tested by online immediate and delayed vocabulary tests, and the students from the customised reading group were also required to complete the questionnaire regarding system use. The results showed that the vocabulary mean scores from both immediate and delayed testing demonstrated significantly better results in word gain and word retention with the customised reading group and that the adaptive reading system was appealing for the students. The study demonstrated that by providing customised reading with word recurrence specific to individuals' unknown words, this adaptive computer‐assisted English as a foreign language reading system creates a more favourable condition for foreign language vocabulary growth.     

Children's text messaging: abbreviations,input methods and links with literacy

This study investigated the effects of mobile phone text‐messaging method (predictive and multi‐press) and experience (in texters and non‐texters) on children's textism use and understanding. It also examined popular claims that the use of text‐message abbreviations, or textese spelling, is associated with poor literacy skills. A sample of 86 children aged 10 to 12 years read and wrote text messages in conventional English and in textese, and completed tests of spelling, reading and non‐word reading. Children took significantly longer and made more errors when reading messages written in textese than in conventional English. Further, they were no faster at writing messages in textese than in conventional English, regardless of texting method or experience. Predictive texters were faster at reading and writing messages than multi‐press texters, and texting experience increased writing, but not reading, speed. General spelling and reading scores did not differ significantly with usual texting method. However, better literacy skills were associated with greater textese reading speed and accuracy. These findings add to the growing evidence for a positive relationship between texting proficiency and traditional literacy skills.     

The effects of a theory‐based summary writing tool on students' summary writing

This paper focuses on the design and evaluation of a theory‐based computer‐assisted summary writing learning environment called Summary Writing‐PAL (SW‐PAL). The SW‐PAL was developed based on four aspects: summarizing strategies, learning theories, prior knowledge, and cognitive load. A quasi‐experiment that involved 58 undergraduates majoring in Computer Science was conducted to examine the effectiveness of SW‐PAL in writing summaries. Two intact classes were selected with 28 and 30 students in control and experimental groups, respectively. The conventional teaching approach was employed in the control group, whereas the SW‐PAL was introduced to the experimental group. Pretest and posttest were administrated to both groups. The findings indicated that SW‐PAL improved students' summary writing performance. A significant variance was noted between intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load among students with varying levels of English proficiency in the experimental group, signifying that the SW‐PAL is more suitable for students with lower language proficiency.     

A word-building method based on neural network for text classification

Text classification is a foundational task in many natural language processing applications. All traditional text classifiers take words as the basic units and conduct the pre-training process (like word2vec) to directly generate word vectors at the first step. However, none of them have considered the information contained in word structure which is proved to be helpful for text classification. In this paper, we propose a word-building method based on neural network model that can decompose a Chinese word to a sequence of radicals and learn structure information from these radical level features which is a key difference from the existing models. Then, the convolutional neural network is applied to extract structure information of words from radical sequence to generate a word vector, and the long short-term memory is applied to generate the sentence vector for the prediction purpose. The experimental results show that our model outperforms other existing models on Chinese dataset. Our model is also applicable to English as well where an English word can be decomposed down to character level, which demonstrates the excellent generalisation ability of our model. The experimental results have proved that our model also outperforms others on English dataset.     

具有智能交互学习能力的机械臂写字系统

基于Uarm机械臂构建了一个学习人类写字顺序的机械臂智能写字系统,该系统首先具有对陌生汉字的自动笔画拆分和书写能力,然后基于语音对话和图像分析技术,能够根据用户教授的笔画和笔顺来学习汉字的正确书写方式.首先,系统根据输入的语音信息以及摄像头观察到的文字的图像信息,获得用户想要写的关键字及对话意图;然后通过对摄像头看到的图像信息进行分析,对检测到的汉字进行自动笔画拆分和笔顺提取,对于正在教授中的字,跟踪笔迹顺序,学习汉字笔顺的正确写法.通过对话管理,机械臂会以对话的形式进行书写反馈并与用户交互,学习人类书写顺序并实现正确书写.通过实验分析及测试者主观评测,该系统取得了不错的评价.     

Community-service learning and computer-mediated advanced composition: The going to class,getting online,and giving back project

Since 1997, the Center for English Studies Technology (CEST) at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa has sponsored several projects that bring together three important areas of research and teaching in English studies: literacy, computer-mediated communication, and community-service learning. The authors conclude that community-service learning projects can be used to further pedagogical goals for technology-intensive writing classes. Students acquired writing and Web page development skills through composing for real audiences, and gained valuable experience teaching people whose life experiences, levels of literacy, and exposure to technology were different from their own. Working with community members enabled students to fill previously unmet needs and provided them with concrete examples of disparities that might otherwise remain abstractions in class discussion. At the same time, the authors are concerned about the sustainability of such efforts as well as the long-term benefits they bring to community participants.     

Students' mathematics word problem‐solving achievement in a computer‐based story

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a computer‐based story, which was designed in anchored instruction framework, on sixth‐grade students' mathematics word problem‐solving achievement. Problems were embedded in a story presented on a computer as computer story, and then compared with the paper‐based version of the same story and to a condition that presented the problems as typical, isolated word problems (i.e., a non‐story condition including only problems). One hundred twenty‐eight sixth‐grade students from two public middle schools in Turkey participated in this study. In a pretest–posttest experimental design, students were randomly assigned to one of the treatment groups mentioned earlier in which they solved the same mathematics word problems. A one‐way analysis of covariance was used to analyse students' achievement in the treatment groups. The results indicated that students who solved the problems in the computer story treatment had significantly higher achievement scores than students who solved the problems in the paper story and isolated word problems treatments. In addition, the story was found to be significantly more effective than the non‐story treatment when it was presented on computer.     

Teaching modeling skills using a massively multiplayer online mathematics game

One important challenge in mathematics education is teaching modeling skills. We analyze the logs from a game-based learning system used in a massively multiplayer online tournament. Students had to detect an input–output pattern across 20 rounds. For each round, they received an input and had 2 minutes to predict the output by selecting a binary option (2 points if correct, ?1 otherwise), or writing a model (4 points if model prediction was correct, ?4 otherwise), or refraining (1 point). Thousands of 3rd to 10th grade students from hundreds of schools simultaneously played together on the web. We identified different types of players using cluster analysis. From 5th grade onwards, we found a cluster of students that wrote models with correct predictions. Half of the 7th to 10th grade students that detected patterns were able to express them with models. The analysis also shows diffusion within the teams of modeling strategies for simple patterns.     

Building an automated English sentence evaluation system for students learning English as a second language

This paper presents an automated scoring system which grades students’ English writing tests. The system provides a score and diagnostic feedback to students without human’s efforts. Target users are Korean students in junior high schools who learn English as a second language. The system takes a single English sentence as its input. Dealing with a single sentence as an input has some advantages on comparing the input with the answers given by human teachers and giving detailed feedback to the students. The system was developed and tested with the real test data collected through English tests given to third grade students in junior high school. Scoring requires two steps of the process. The first process is analyzing the input sentence in order to detect possible errors, such as spelling errors and syntactic errors. The second process is comparing the input sentence with given answers to identify the differences as errors. To evaluate the performance of the system, the output produced by the system is compared with the result provided by human raters. The score agreement value between a human rater and the system is quite close to the value between two human raters.     

Effectiveness of MMORPG‐based instruction in elementary English education in Korea

This study investigated the effectiveness of massive multiplayer online role‐playing game (MMORPG)‐based (massive multiplayer online role‐playing game) instruction in elementary English education. The effectiveness of the MMORPG program was compared with face‐to‐face instruction and the independent variables (gender, prior knowledge, motivation for learning, self‐directed learning skills, computer skills, game skills, computer capacity, network speed, and computer accessibility) were examined to see how accurately achievement was predicted in MMORPG instruction. The results indicated that students studying English utilizing online role‐playing games showed higher scores in areas of listening, reading, and writing than those who attended face‐to‐face instruction classes. It was also found that prior knowledge, motivation for learning, and network speed were factors affecting achievement in English learning. These findings suggest that MMORPGs can play an important role in improving English communicative skills.     

The effects of participation,performance, and interest in a game‐based writing environment

We have observed that many computer‐supported writing environments based on pedagogical strategies have only been designed to incorporate the cognitive aspects, but motivational aspects should also be included. Hence, we theorize that integrating game‐based learning into the writing environment may be a practical approach that can facilitate student participation, not only helping students learn how to write, but also sustaining their willingness to write. In this study, we investigate the effects of the game‐based writing environment on improving students' participation, performance, and interest in writing. An experiment was conducted to compare the effectiveness of 2 approaches to writing in language arts at an elementary school. Two hundred forty‐five third grade students participated in the experiment over a period of 1 year. One hundred thirty‐nine students were assigned to an experimental group and learned with a game‐based writing environment, and 106 students were in the contrast group and learned with an online writing environment. The empirical results show that the game‐based writing environment can effectively promote students' writing participation, writing performance, interest in writing, as well as their perceptions of the use of educational self‐management games. Some implications of the experimental results are also discussed.     

基于频繁词义序列的检索结果聚类算法研究

目前大多搜索引擎结果聚类算法针对用户查询生成的网页摘要进行聚类,由于网页摘要较短且质量良莠不齐,聚类效果难以保证。提出了一种基于频繁词义序列的检索结果聚类算法,利用WordNet结合句法和语义特征对搜索结果构建聚类及标签。不像传统的基于向量空间模型的聚类算法,考虑了词语在文档中的序列模式。算法首先对文本进行预处理,生成压缩文档以降低文本数据维度,构建广义后缀树,挖掘出最大频繁项集,然后获取频繁词义序列。从文档中获取的有序频繁项集可以更好地反映文档的主题,把相同主题的搜索结果聚类在一起,与用户查询相关度高的优先排序。实验表明,该算法可以获得与查询相关的高质量聚类及基于语义的聚类标签,具有更高的聚类准确度和更高的运行效率,并且可扩展性良好。     

The effects of mice and pull‐down menus versus command‐driven interfaces on writing

The effects of two different computer user interfaces on the process of writing are examined. English composition students (matched on computer experience) used a computer and keyboard (either with function keys or with a mouse) to write essays during their English classes. Essays generated using either a mouse or command‐driven interface were compared across different stages of writing. The impact of using a mouse versus command‐driven interface is described by analyzing the differences in the process used to create the essays and the quality of the essays produced by each group. Results indicate that students who used the command‐driven interface scored better on organization of the paper, creativity, number of supporting arguments, grammar/spelling, and letter grade than did their mouse counterparts, as perceived by graders. However, there were no significant differences between the two interface conditions on any grammatical indices.     

Facilitating comprehension of non‐native English speakers during lectures in English with STR‐texts

We provided texts generated by speech‐to text‐recognition (STR) technology for non‐native English speaking students during lectures in English in order to test whether STR‐texts were useful for enhancing students' comprehension of lectures. To this end, we carried out an experiment in which 60 participants were randomly assigned to a control group (i.e., 30 participants who learned without STR‐texts) and an experimental group (i.e., 30 participants who learned with STR‐texts). Our results showed that the participants in the experimental group outperformed those in the control group. Our second objective was to explore the effectiveness of STR‐texts on the learning performance of the experimental‐group participants with different levels of English as a Foreign Language ability, that is, high and low. The results showed that the low ability students had lower self‐efficacy than the high ability students. The results also showed no significant effect of STR‐texts on the post‐test scores of the low and high ability participants after controlling for the effect of English as a Foreign Language ability. No significant difference was found in cognitive load and anxiety of the low and high ability participants. Based on the implications of our findings, several suggestions are made for the teaching and research communities.     

Enhancing web-based language learning through self-monitoring

Abstract  The present study investigated the effects of a self-monitoring strategy on web-based language learning. Both students' academic performance and their motivational beliefs were investigated. The interaction between the use of a self-monitoring strategy and the level of learners' English proficiency was also examined. A total of 99 college students who were enrolled in classes for Freshmen English participated in this study. The experimental group was led to a web page with self-monitoring form for recording study time and environment, learning process, predicting test scores, and self-evaluation while the control group was not. It was found that (1) the self-monitoring strategy had a significant main effect on students' academic performance and their motivational beliefs; students who applied the self-monitoring strategy outperformed students who did not apply the self-monitoring strategy on both academic performance and motivational beliefs regardless of their English proficiency level; and (2) the influence of self-monitoring was greater on the lower English level students than on the higher English level students. The positive findings suggest that encouraging students to develop self-monitoring could help increase the success of online learning. Thus, applying a self-monitoring strategy is strongly recommended for web-based instruction.     

Grammatical and context‐sensitive error correction using a statistical machine translation framework

Producing electronic rather than paper documents has considerable benefits such as easier organizing and data management. Therefore, existence of automatic writing assistance tools such as spell and grammar checker/correctors can increase the quality of electronic texts by removing noise and correcting the erroneous sentences. Different kinds of errors in a text can be categorized into spelling, grammatical and real‐word errors. In this article, we present a language‐independent approach based on a statistical machine translation framework to develop a proofreading tool, which detects grammatical errors as well as context‐sensitive spelling mistakes (real‐word errors). A hybrid model for grammar checking is suggested by combining the mentioned approach with an existing rule‐based grammar checker. Experimental results on both English and Persian languages indicate that the proposed statistical method and the rule‐based grammar checker are complementary in detecting and correcting syntactic errors. The results of the hybrid grammar checker, applied to some English texts, show an improvement of about 24% with respect to the recall metric with almost similar value for precision. Experiments on real‐world data set show that state‐of‐the‐art results are achieved for grammar checking and context‐sensitive spell checking for Persian language. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.