language immersion from birth is crucial to a child's language development. However, language immersion can be particularly challenging for hearing parents of deaf children to provide as they may have to overcome ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781605588810
language immersion from birth is crucial to a child's language development. However, language immersion can be particularly challenging for hearing parents of deaf children to provide as they may have to overcome many difficulties while learning sign language. We intend to create a mobile device-based system to help hearing parents learn sign language. The first step is to understand what level of detail (i.e., resolution) is necessary for novice signers to learn from video of signs. In this paper we present the results of a study designed to evaluate the ability of novices learning sign language to ascertain the details of a particular sign based on video presented on a mobile device. Four conditions were presented. Three conditions involve manipulation of video resolution (low, medium, and high). The fourth condition employs insets showing the sign handshapes along with the high resolution video. Subjects were tested on their ability to emulate the given sign over 80 signs commonly used between parents and their young children. Although participants noticed a reduction in quality in the low resolution condition, there was no significant effect of condition on ability to generate the sign. Sign difficulty had a significant correlation with ability to correctly reproduce the sign. Although the inset handshape condition did not improve the participants' ability to emulate the signs correctly, participant feedback provided insight into situations where insets would be more useful, as well as further suggestions to improve video intelligibility. Participants were able to reproduce even the most complex signs tested with relatively high accuracy.
Adaptive and intelligent instructional systems are used to deal with the issue of learning personalisation in contexts where human instructors are not immediately available, so their role is transferred entirely or in...
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Adaptive and intelligent instructional systems are used to deal with the issue of learning personalisation in contexts where human instructors are not immediately available, so their role is transferred entirely or in part onto the computer. Even though such systems are mostly developed for well-defined domains that have a rather straightforward acquisition order, such as mathematics or computer programming, they found their application in ill-defined domains as well. Natural languagelearning is one such domain, and developing adaptive instructional systems for this specific purpose is notoriously complex and challenging due to the nature of language systems. The paper at hand examines the theoretical background of adaptivity and intelligence in instructional systems, and discusses their application in learning and teaching of natural languages. Moreover, the paper reviews adaptive and intelligent languagelearning systems in existence and identifies their characteristics in a systematic manner. The discussion section offers a more detailed view of selected systems for languagelearning that exhibit interesting and innovative implementation solutions. The paper concludes by suggesting possible developmental directions and future work in the field.
In order for a piece of educational software to be accepted and continuously used by the target group of users, it needs to cater for the majority of their needs and deliver its services in a user-friendly way. That i...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9789532330984
In order for a piece of educational software to be accepted and continuously used by the target group of users, it needs to cater for the majority of their needs and deliver its services in a user-friendly way. That is why it is crucial to evaluate user satisfaction with a system during its developmental phase, so that issues may be dealt with even before it is introduced into day-to-day use. The paper at hand presents the results of examining user satisfaction with a prototype of languagelearning System (LLS) an adaptive, web-based system for languagelearning developed at our institution using an adapted version of a previously developed and verified questionnaire. It reports on the strengths and weaknesses of the system in question with a special emphasis on its content (tests, language tasks, learning materials and feedback opportunities), adaptive capabilities, and the overall graphical design, and, where appropriate, suggests ways for improvement. The results further reveal certain usage and study patterns of students and their general attitudes regarding computer aided languagelearning. A total of twenty university-level students, who were systematically preparing for a language comprehension test over a period of three weeks, participated in the study.
We describe a "Multi-lingual Adaptive language Tutor" (MALT) that uses natural language parsing and text generation to create various kinds of grammar exercises for learners of any language. These exercises ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781586035303
We describe a "Multi-lingual Adaptive language Tutor" (MALT) that uses natural language parsing and text generation to create various kinds of grammar exercises for learners of any language. These exercises can be restricted to specific topics by the instructor such as transformation of verb tenses. MALT generates novel exercises focusing on the specific difficulties of language learners as determined from their past mistakes, helping them overcome individual difficulties faster. We also present the first preliminary results from employing MALT in the foreign language classroom at Notre Dame.
This paper investigates using Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based vowel duration features for automated assessment of non-native speech. Two different types of models were compared: a single GMM trained on a reference ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781457705397
This paper investigates using Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based vowel duration features for automated assessment of non-native speech. Two different types of models were compared: a single GMM trained on a reference corpus of native speech and separate GMMs for different proficiency levels trained on a large corpus of scored non-native speech. 13 vowel categories were evaluated separately (after normalization by rate of speech), and a multiple regression model was used to evaluate the performance of all vowel categories combined. Experiments on an English language proficiency assessment show that the non-native speech GMMs outperform the native speech GMMs, and that all 13 vowels have significant correlations with human scores when the non-native speech GMMs are used. The multiple regression combination obtained correlations with human scores of 0.71 when transcriptions were used to extract the vowel durations and 0.64 when the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) output was used. The experiments demonstrate that the vowel duration feature based on non-native speech GMMs is a useful predictor of L2 proficiency and is robust to different datasets and situations.
In this paper, we describe and evaluate two state-of-the-art systems for identifying and correcting writing errors involving English articles and prepositions. Criterion(SM), developed by Educational Testing Service, ...
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In this paper, we describe and evaluate two state-of-the-art systems for identifying and correcting writing errors involving English articles and prepositions. Criterion(SM), developed by Educational Testing Service, and ESL Assistant , developed by Microsoft Research, both use machine learning techniques to build models of article and preposition usage which enable them to identify errors and suggest corrections to the writer. We evaluated the effects of these systems on users in two studies. In one, Criterion provided feedback about article errors to native and non-native speakers who were writing an essay for a college-level psychology course. The results showed a significant reduction in the number of article errors in the final essays of the non-native speakers. In the second study, ESL Assistant was used by non-native speakers who were composing email messages. The results indicated that users were selective in their choices among the system's suggested corrections and that, as a result, they were able to increase the proportion of valid corrections by making effective use of feedback.
Some studies have been reporting encouraging results concerning the possibilities of combining voice and its visual representation for languagelearning. Following this line of investigation this paper explores the po...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781479940387
Some studies have been reporting encouraging results concerning the possibilities of combining voice and its visual representation for languagelearning. Following this line of investigation this paper explores the potential impact of two distinct visualization styles for the learning of English pronunciation of syllables for non-native speakers: a) highlighting syllables and b) the visualization of the produced sound wave. In order to evaluate the benefits of the two different styles three distinct digital tool prototypes were created in order to test four study conditions. The conditions under evaluation were a) teaching syllables without the support of any digital tool;b) teaching using a prototype that highlighted the syllables under study;c) using a prototype that displayed the sound wave of the syllable to be learnt and d) a prototype that combined the functionality of b) and c). Results suggest that the combined approach seems to be as effective as the traditional classroom approach of teaching the syllables. However, more research is needed in order to consolidate the findings, being able to explore in more detail how is the learning process occurring and to what extend the tools developed can be integrated into classroom practice.
The massive use of Facebook opens new horizons in the areas of information and communications technology, which induced changes in pedagogy. Towards this direction, we implemented an educational application for learni...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781614992622;9781614992615
The massive use of Facebook opens new horizons in the areas of information and communications technology, which induced changes in pedagogy. Towards this direction, we implemented an educational application for learninglanguages. In order to cover the heterogeneous group of people to which educational applications are targeted and to further emphasize the educational aspect of Facebook, we implemented and present the multivariate clustering for group learning in Facebook. By the incorporation of the multiple parameter based clustering, the problem of grouping students, in order to provide sophisticated user models, is further treated. Multivariate clustering is conducted by the k-means algorithm which takes as input, to initialize the process, multiple students' characteristics.
Most natural language terms-such as verbs, nouns, conjunctions, prepositions-have a context-dependent meaning. The dependence of the meaning on the context changes with languages. This variability accounts for many er...
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Most natural language terms-such as verbs, nouns, conjunctions, prepositions-have a context-dependent meaning. The dependence of the meaning on the context changes with languages. This variability accounts for many errors made by students while learning a foreign language.
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