Projet CorrecTools

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An English Writing Assistantfor Non Native
Speakers

• Projet CorrecTools
• (CAPRA Compagnon dApprentissage et de
  Perfectionnement à la Rédaction en Anglais)
• M. Garnier, A. Rykner
• Université Toulouse 2
• P. Saint-Dizier
• CNRS
• France

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Introduction

• English main language for international
  communication
• ? Necessity for Non Native Speakers of English
  (NNS) to produce satisfactory English texts
  (personal/professional spheres)
• Learning and practice necessary requirements for
  long-term acquisition of writing skills
• Each language and linguistic community encounter
  specific problems in writing English (language
  transfer)
• Need for an automatic English writing
  assistant
• Presentation of our project
• Aims and challenges
• Corpus constitution and error analysis
• Annotation of errors
• Some results of the analysis of a Thai to English
  corpus

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1. Aims and challenges

• Presence of grammatical, lexical and stylistic
  errors in the productions of NNS
• Make comprehension difficult damage credibility
  
• A lot of errors are not treated by text editors
  such as MS Word etc.
• Didactic perspective explanation of errors and
  grammar rules given alongside the corrections
• Focus on pairs of languages (French to English,
  Thai to English)
• Prototypicality of errors easier correction
  process
• Knowledge of the L1 more efficient analysis and
  correction of errors

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2. Corpus constitution and error analysis

• Exploratory corpus emails, reports, scientific
  publications, web pages, blogs
• Parameters
• Variety of authors (professionals, researchers,
  students)
• Different domains of production (business,
  research, personal sphere)
• Different levels of control, i.e. amount of care
  devoted to the production of a document
• First stage manual detection, annotation, and
  correction of errors
• Classification of errors creation of a system of
  categories
• Characteristics of the system
• Categories created according to linguistic
  criteria, i.e. NP, PP, VP, Clause and Sentence
• Inclusion of two levels of subtypes of errors
  inside main categories
• Inclusion of indications concerning broad
  linguistic parameters Lexicon, Morpho-Syntax,
  Syntax, Semantics, Style

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2. Corpus constitution and error analysis (2)

• Example

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3. The annotation of errors

• Errors are annotated using a standard XML
  formalism enriched with attributes
• Schema designed so as to reflect cognitive
  strategies used by human correctors when
  detecting and correcting errors
• Delimitation and characterization of errors

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3. The annotation of errors (2)

• Delimitation and characterization of corrections

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3. The annotation of errors (3)

• Example of an annotated error with multiple
  corrections
• The second stage has therefore two goals ...
  and the construction of the meaning utterance.

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4. Some results on a Thai-English corpus

• Preliminary study conducted on a limited corpus
  of English texts written by Thai native speakers
• Description of corpus
• 10 scientific abstracts
• 1755 words
• Various research domains and writers
• Steps completed so far
• Detection of errors
• Classification of errors
• Highlighting several aspects of error
  distribution
• Future steps
• Annotation of errors
• Collaboration with Thai native speakers in order
  to study the extent of transfer effects
• Towards a correction system?

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4. Some results on a Thai-English corpus (2)

• Distribution of errors according to broad
  linguistic parameters (number of subtypes of
  errors vs. number of errors in total for each
  axis)

Lexicon
MorphoSyntax
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4. Some results on a Thai-English corpus (3)

• Distribution of errors according to main
  categories of our system (number of subtypes of
  errors vs. number of errors in total for each
  category)

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4. Some results on a Thai-English corpus (4)

• Distribution of errors according to subtypes of
  errors
• Main types of errors omission of determiner,
  omission of plural, erroneous subject/verb
  agreement, abusive NØN construction

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4. Some results on a Thai-English corpus (5)

• Omission of determiner
• World of information technologies can be
  classifiied into 2 main groups.
• ? The world of information technologies can be
  classified into 2 main groups
• Omission of plural
• Reading from book and website is a way to
  diagnose diseases.
• ? Reading from books and websites is a way to
  diagnose diseases.
• Erroneous subject/verb agreement
• Precision depend on noise in each website.
• ? Precision depends on noise in each website.
• Abusive NØN construction
• It will decrease the plant quality.
• ? It will decrease the quality of the plant /
  the plants quality.

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Perspectives

• French to English
• Extend the initial corpus
• Investigate the relevance of learner corpora
• Stabilize the classification system and the
  annotation schema
• Focus on certain errors and start drafting rules
  for correction
• Evaluate the needs of a population of users and
  the demand for such a tool
• Thai to English
• Extend the initial corpus
• Work with Thai researchers to evaluate the needs
  of potential users and assess the quality of the
  analyses proposed
• Draft a roadmap for the continuation of the
  project in Thailand

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• Kop khun khà!
• CorrecTools website
• http//www.irit.fr/recherches/ILPL/webct/ct.html