An Intelligent Language Tutoring System

In this paper, we present the theoretical background and describe the design and implementation of an intelligent language tutoring system (ILTS). The most important properties of our system are: (1) The system is based on a very complete and “objective” grammar knowledge base; (2) Students can at any moment during an exercise ask the system questions about the grammar, and they are immediately answered without losing the exercise context. Thus the normal behaviour of a tutor is better simulated, which contributes to a user-friendly interface; and (3) It allows for individual correction of errors and reaction to errors. This is due to the fact that the system is firmly based on a linguistically well-founded analysis. The sentences formulated by the students are parsed and analysed. They are not simply matched against predefined answers as is still the case with many other more classically oriented systems.

[1]  Mark James,et al.  An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Language Instruction , 1978, Artif. Intell..

[2]  Stephen G. Pulman.  Limited Domain Systems For Language Teaching , 1984, COLING.

[3]  Norman K. Sondheimer,et al.  Meta-Rules as a Basis for Processing III-Formed Input , 1983, Am. J. Comput. Linguistics.

[4]  Camilla Schwind,et al.  Logic Based Natural Language Processing , 1984, Natural Language Understanding and Natural Language Understanding Workshop.

[5]  Camilla Schwind,et al.  A Formalism for the Description of Question Answering Systems , 1978, Natural Language Communication with Computers.

[6]  Leonard Bolc,et al.  Representation and processing of natural language , 1980 .

[7]  S. Krashen.  Formal and Informal Linguistic Environments in Language Acquisition and Language Learning. , 1976 .

[8]  Richard Granger.  The NOMAD System: Expectation-Based Detection and Correction of Errors During Understanding of Syntactically and Semantically III-Formed Text , 1983, Am. J. Comput. Linguistics.

[9]  J. S. Brown,et al.  Pedagogical, natural language, and knowledge engineering techniques in SOPHIE-I, II and III , 1982 .

[10]  Wolfgang Menzel.  Automated Reasoning About Natural Language Correctness , 1987, EACL.

[11]  Ethel Schuster.  The role of native grammars in correcting errors in second language learning , 1986, Comput. Intell..

[12]  Jaime G. Carbonell,et al.  Coping with Extragrammaticality , 1984, ACL.

[13]  Camilla Schwind,et al.  Outline of an Integrated Theory of Natural Language Understanding , 1978 .

[14]  Alain Colmerauer,et al.  Metamorphosis Grammars , 1978, Natural Language Communication with Computers.

[15]  Camilla Schwind.  Sensitive parsing: error analysis and explanation in an intelligent language tutoring system , 1988, COLING.

[16]  Lance A. Miller,et al.  Parse Fitting and Prose Fixing: Getting a Hold on III-Formedness , 1983, Am. J. Comput. Linguistics.