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Argumentative Writing Support System for EFL Learners

Research Project

Project/Area Number 20J13239
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows

Allocation TypeSingle-year Grants
Section国内
Review Section Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
Research InstitutionTokyo Institute of Technology

Principal Investigator

PUTRA JAN WIRA GOTAMA  東京工業大学, 情報理工学院, 特別研究員(DC2)

Project Period (FY) 2020-04-24 – 2022-03-31
Project Status Completed (Fiscal Year 2021)
Budget Amount *help
¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
Fiscal Year 2021: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2020: ¥1,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000)
KeywordsArgumentative Structure / EFL learners / ICNALE-AS2R Corpus / Annotation / Sentence Reordering / Structure Parsing / EFL students / argumentative structure / annotation tool / TIARA / annotator agreement
Outline of Research at the Start

This research aims to develop a tool to enable non-native English speakers in writing better argumentative essays (in English). Specifically, it works by arranging sentences in the essay such that it results in a better logically-structured text.
Our main approach is to analyse the argumentative structure. Argumentative structure analysis aims to understand how sentences are connected to each other when forming argument as a whole. The way how to order sentences properly can be inferred from such structure. The tool is useful especially for helping teacher in giving feedback to students.

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

My research aims to develop a support tool for analysis and improving argumentative essays written by English-as-foreign-language (EFL) learners. The tool extracts and visualizes the argumentative structure of a given essay, and then suggests an improved version of the essay by reordering sentences. This project was divided into several steps:
(a) Dataset Construction. In 2020, I constructed the first corpus of 434 essays written by EFL learners (ICNALE-AS2R), which have been annotated with argumentative structure and sentence reordering. I also developed an in-house annotation software (open-source) TIARA for this step.
(b) Structure Parsing Model. Given an input essay, I developed a deep learning system to predict the argumentative structure of the essay. I used the combination of Biaffine Attention and BERT models. I also proposed multi-task and multi-corpora training strategies which enhanced the parsing performance of the base model. The idea was to guide the model on how to reduce the search space and to utilise existing non-EFL datasets via selective sampling.
(c) Sentence Reordering Model. Given an essay and its corresponding argumentative structure as input, I proposed a reordering system based on the linguistic theory of coherence. The task was formulated as a traversal problem, containing two steps. The first is a pairwise ordering constraint task between pairs of sentences (tackled using ALBERT model). The second is a traversal (output generation) step using an ad-hoc algorithm. Detailed empirical evaluation showed that my proposed system has a good potential.

Research Progress Status

令和3年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。

Strategy for Future Research Activity

令和3年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。

Report

(2 results)
  • 2021 Annual Research Report
  • 2020 Annual Research Report
  • Research Products

    (13 results)

All 2021 2020 Other

All Int'l Joint Research (2 results) Journal Article (2 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 2 results,  Peer Reviewed: 2 results,  Open Access: 2 results) Presentation (4 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 3 results,  Invited: 1 results) Remarks (5 results)

  • [Int'l Joint Research] University of Cambridge(英国)

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
  • [Int'l Joint Research] University of Cambridge(英国)

    • Related Report
      2020 Annual Research Report
  • [Journal Article] Annotating argumentative structure in English-as-a-Foreign-Language learner essays2021

    • Author(s)
      Jan Wira Gotama Putra, Simone Teufel and Takenobu Tokunaga
    • Journal Title

      Natural Language Engineering

      Volume: - Issue: 6 Pages: 1-27

    • DOI

      10.1017/s1351324921000218

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
    • Peer Reviewed / Open Access / Int'l Joint Research
  • [Journal Article] TIARA 2.0: an interactive tool for annotating discourse structure and text improvement2021

    • Author(s)
      Jan Wira Gotama Putra, Kana Matsumura, Simone Teufel and Takenobu Tokunaga
    • Journal Title

      Language Resources & Evaluation

      Volume: - Issue: 1 Pages: 1-25

    • DOI

      10.1007/s10579-021-09566-0

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
    • Peer Reviewed / Open Access / Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] Parsing Argumentative Structure in English-as-Foreign-Language Essays2021

    • Author(s)
      Jan Wira Gotama Putra
    • Organizer
      Sixteenth Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA), Association for Computational Linguistics
    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] Multi-Task and Multi-Corpora Training Strategies to Enhance Argumentative Sentence Linking Performance2021

    • Author(s)
      Jan Wira Gotama Putra
    • Organizer
      Eighth Workshop on Argument Mining (ArgMin), Association for Computational Linguistics
    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] TIARA: A Tool for Annotating Discourse Relations and Sentence Reordering2020

    • Author(s)
      Jan Wira Gotama Putra, Simone Teufel, Kana Matsumura, Takenobu Tokunaga
    • Organizer
      International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (peer-reviewed)
    • Related Report
      2020 Annual Research Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] Annotating Argumentative Structure in English-as-Foreign-Language Essays2020

    • Author(s)
      Jan Wira Gotama Putra
    • Organizer
      Indonesia Association of Computational Linguistics (INACL)
    • Related Report
      2020 Annual Research Report
    • Invited
  • [Remarks] TIARA homepage

    • URL

      https://sites.google.com/view/tokyotechcl-tiara/

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
  • [Remarks] ICNALE-AS2R dataset

    • URL

      https://www.gsk.or.jp/en/catalog/gsk2021-a

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
  • [Remarks] Released code for BEA paper

    • URL

      https://github.com/wiragotama/BEA2021

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
  • [Remarks] Released code for ArgMin paper

    • URL

      https://github.com/wiragotama/ArgMin2021

    • Related Report
      2021 Annual Research Report
  • [Remarks] TIARA annotation tool open-source page

    • URL

      https://github.com/wiragotama/TIARA-annotationTool

    • Related Report
      2020 Annual Research Report

URL: 

Published: 2020-07-07   Modified: 2024-03-26  

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