Coursebook Texts as a Helping Hand for Classifying Linguistic Complexity in Language Learners’ Writings

Ildikó Pilán, David Alfter, Elena Volodina


Abstract
We bring together knowledge from two different types of language learning data, texts learners read and texts they write, to improve linguistic complexity classification in the latter. Linguistic complexity in the foreign and second language learning context can be expressed in terms of proficiency levels. We show that incorporating features capturing lexical complexity information from reading passages can boost significantly the machine learning based classification of learner-written texts into proficiency levels. With an F1 score of .8 our system rivals state-of-the-art results reported for other languages for this task. Finally, we present a freely available web-based tool for proficiency level classification and lexical complexity visualization for both learner writings and reading texts.
Anthology ID:
W16-4114
Volume:
Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (CL4LC)
Month:
December
Year:
2016
Address:
Osaka, Japan
Editors:
Dominique Brunato, Felice Dell’Orletta, Giulia Venturi, Thomas François, Philippe Blache
Venue:
CL4LC
SIG:
Publisher:
The COLING 2016 Organizing Committee
Note:
Pages:
120–126
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W16-4114
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Ildikó Pilán, David Alfter, and Elena Volodina. 2016. Coursebook Texts as a Helping Hand for Classifying Linguistic Complexity in Language Learners’ Writings. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (CL4LC), pages 120–126, Osaka, Japan. The COLING 2016 Organizing Committee.
Cite (Informal):
Coursebook Texts as a Helping Hand for Classifying Linguistic Complexity in Language Learners’ Writings (Pilán et al., CL4LC 2016)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/W16-4114.pdf