Theories of natural language syntax often characterize grammatical knowledge as a form of abstract computation. This paper argues that such a characterization is correct, and that fundamental properties of grammar can and should be understood in terms of restrictions on the complexity of possible grammatical computation, when defined in terms of…

A traditional distance learning system requires supervisors or teachers always available on online to facilitate and monitor a learner's progress by answering questions and guiding users. We presents an English chat room system in which students discuss course contents and ask questions to and receive from teachers and other students. The…

Over the years, educators have proposed a variety of active learning pedagogical approaches that focus on encouraging students to discover for themselves the principles and solutions that will engage them in learning and enhance their educational outcomes. Among these approaches are problem-based, inquiry-based, experiential, and discovery…

Larry Bates argues for vocabulary instruction that emphasizes useful, high-frequency words rather than lists of rarely used terms. He suggests resources for finding frequency ratings for words and for determining appropriately challenging words for students. (Contains 3 figures and 3 notes.)

An important component of fluent linguistic production is control of the multi-word expressions referred to as clusters, chunks or bundles. These are extended collocations which appear more frequently than expected by chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense of coherence in a text. Bundles have begun to…

This paper presents particular pedagogical applications of a number of corpus-based CALL (computer assisted language learning) programs such as "CONTEXTS" and "CLOZE," "MATCHUP" and "BILINGUAL SENTENCE SHUFFLER," in the teaching of English through children's literature. An elective course in Taiwan for…

The present study investigates the effects of scaffolding and web concordancers on students' proofreading performance. The study addresses the following research questions: (1) How does a concordancer search enhance students' proofreading performance? (2) How does scaffolding for concordancer searches enhance students' proofreading performance?…

Journal editorials allow readers to select the most deserving contributions in the literature and adopt approaches or procedures endorsed by an authority in the field; they act as gatekeepers to the community of practice and at the same time allow editors to connect directly with their readership. Following a number of studies on the structure and…

Numerous studies have affirmed the value of asynchronous online communication as a learning resource. Several investigations, however, have indicated that discussions in asynchronous environments are often neither interactive nor coherent. The research reported sought to develop an enhanced understanding of interactional coherence, argumentation,…

The work aims to improve the assessment of creative problem-solving in science education by employing language technologies and computational-statistical machine learning methods to grade students' natural language responses automatically. To evaluate constructs like creative problem-solving with validity, open-ended questions that elicit…

This paper deals with the issues of language planning and naming in Lithuania since the restoration of independence in 1990. The aim of the paper is to analyse the challenges of corpus planning with the focus on the use and standardisation of personal names. The paper first presents the historical context of the formation of names in Lithuania and…

Sensitivity to prosodic cues might be used to constrain lexical search. Indeed, the prosodic organization of speech is such that words are invariably aligned with phrasal prosodic edges, providing a cue to segmentation. In this paper we devise an experimental paradigm that allows us to investigate the interaction between statistical and prosodic…

A guide to the use of a computer program for discourse analysis is presented. The program, which derives root-words from other word forms, performs an automated, interactive analysis of words in their immediate context, using a previously developed dictionary program. The program is hierarchically menu-driven. The guide outlines the program's…

An automatic classification technique has been developed, based on the character structure of words. (Author)

This report summarizes the capabilities of five computer programs at Yale that do automatic natural language processing as of the end of 1976. For each program an introduction to its overall intent is given, followed by the input/output, a short discussion of the research underlying the program, and a prognosis for future development. The programs…