From Distributions to Labels: A Lexical Proficiency Analysis using Learner Corpora

David Alfter; Yuri Bizzoni; Anders Agebjórn; Elena Volodina; Ildikó Pilán

Title:

Author:

David Alfter: University of Gothenburg, Sweden Yuri Bizzoni: University of Gothenburg, Sweden Anders Agebjórn: University of Gothenburg, Sweden Elena Volodina: University of Gothenburg, Sweden Ildikó Pilán: University of Gothenburg, Sweden

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Year:

2016

Conference:

Proceedings of the joint workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning and NLP for Language Acquisition at SLTC, Umeå, 16th November 2016

Issue:

130

Article no.:

001

Pages:

1-7

No. of pages:

Publication type:

Abstract and Fulltext

Published:

2016-11-15

ISBN:

978-91-7685-633-8

Series:

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

ISSN (print):

1650-3686

ISSN (online):

1650-3740

Publisher:

Linköping University Electronic Press, Linköpings universitet

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In this work we look at how information from second language learner essay corpora can be used for the evaluation of unseen learner essays. Using a corpus of learner essays which have been graded by well-trained human assessors using the CEFR scale, we extract a list of word distributions over CEFR levels. For the analysis of unseen essays, we want to map each word to a so-called target CEFR level using this word list. However, the task of mapping from a distribution to a single label is not trivial. We are also investigating how we can evaluate the mapping from distribution to label. We show that the distributional profile of words from the essays, informed with the essays’ levels, consistently overlaps with our frequency-based method, in the sense that words holding the same level of proficiency as predicted by our mapping tend to cluster together in a semantic space. In the absence of a gold standard, this information can be useful to see how often a word is associated with the same level in two different models. Also, in this case we have a similarity measure that can show which words are more central to a given level and which words are more peripheral.

Keywords: Lexical complexity, Common European Framework of Reference, Mapping, Semantic space

Proceedings of the joint workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning and NLP for Language Acquisition at SLTC, Umeå, 16th November 2016

Author:

David Alfter, Yuri Bizzoni, Anders Agebjórn, Elena Volodina, Ildikó Pilán

Title:

From Distributions to Labels: A Lexical Proficiency Analysis using Learner Corpora

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Proceedings of the joint workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning and NLP for Language Acquisition at SLTC, Umeå, 16th November 2016

Author:

David Alfter, Yuri Bizzoni, Anders Agebjórn, Elena Volodina, Ildikó Pilán

Title:

From Distributions to Labels: A Lexical Proficiency Analysis using Learner Corpora

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