Language tools for writers

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Language tools for writers

• Ola Knutsson
• IPLab, NADA, KTH
• Sweden

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Outline

• Ideas from the early 90s
• Language technology included in tools for
  writers
• Language tools developed at Nada
• Language tools and language learning

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Early 90s revisited (Severinson Eklundh et al,
1992)

• Language tools should support the writing
  process.
• Language processor instead of word processor
  (character processing).
• Implement and use language tools, in spite of
  their limitations.

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Language tools wanted (Cedergren Severinson
Eklundh, 1992)

• Interactive concordances
• Interactive dictionaries
• Language based search function
• Swedish grammatical analysis
• A grammar checker for Swedish
• Language based editing

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Possibilities and Risks with Language Technology

• Language technology can provide relevant
  feedback on the users unconstrained speech- or
  writing production.
• False feedback can fool the user
• Lack of feedback can mislead the user

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Granska

• Is a Swedish grammar checker developed at our
  department.
• Combines statistical and rule based methods.
• Contains a lot of opportunities for new
  applications.
• Different user interfaces

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detection
diagnosis
correction
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Granskas main features

• 1. Detects, makes diagnoses and proposes
  corrections on Swedish writers frequent errors
• 2. Eight broad error types are detected, about 50
  of all syntactic errors were detected, about
  35 in second language learners texts.
• 3. Granska is very fast (6000 words/s)

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From Granska to CrossCheck

• Focus on writers with Swedish as a second
  language
• To extend and adapt Granska to these users
• Improve error coverage and diagnostics of the
  errors
• Develop new methods for dealing with errors that
  hard to describe with rules.

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Language Tools for Learners

• How can we support second language learners
  writing with other technology than a robust
  grammar checker?
• What functionality is important in a learning
  environment for second language learners of
  Swedish?

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User studies at a Swedish University

• Study 1
• Students Swedish as a foreign language, 5
  users, argumentative texts, 2 months
• Study 2
• Students Swedish as a foreign language, 10
  users. Different kinds of text genres, 4 months.

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How should we design an environment supporting
learning activities?

• Our proposal is a program called Grim.
• Grim is a learning environment with several
  language tools.
• Grim gives feedback on different aspects of the
  learners language.

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Functionality in Grim

• Grim includes a word processor.
• Grim gives feedback on errors by using Granska.
• Grim provides grammatical information by using
  Granska Text Analyzer.
• Grim has an interface for concordances in 20
  million words.
• Grim includes a dictionary with 8 language pairs.

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Concluding remarks

• It is important to support different aspects of
  language learning.
• One robust grammar checker is not enough.
• Some of the ideas from the 90s are implemented
  but still there is a lot of research to do.

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• CrossCheck
• http//www.nada.kth.se/theory/projects/xcheck
• The use of language tools for writers in the
  context of learning Swedish as a second language
• http//www.nada.kth.se/knutsson/call-en.html
• Grim
• http//skrutten.nada.kth.se/grim