Title: CALICO 2003 Determining the Countability of English Nouns (DeCEN): A CALL System to Help Students Practice and Develop Reasoning in Determining the Countability of English Nouns.
1CALICO 2003Determining the Countability of
English Nouns (DeCEN)A CALL System to Help
Students Practice and Develop Reasoning in
Determining the Countability of English Nouns.
- Kazumi Slott, M.s. kslott_at_csusm.edu
- Rika Yoshii, Ph.D. ryoshii_at_csusm.edu
- California State University, San Marcos
2Research in Multiple Fields
- This presentation describes a project that
combines research in linguistics, educational
psychology and computer science.
3Background
- What we did
- DeCEN is a CALL system available via the Internet
for helping ESL/EFL students master the English
countability system. - Why we did it
- Determining the countability of English nouns is
difficult for many Asian students whose languages
have different views about what is countable. - There are not enough CALL systems for countablity
available via the Internet.
4Features of Our Model
- Permits discussing the concepts with the student
without relying on English terms that may confuse
the ESL student. - Makes it explicit why the same noun can be both
countable and non-countable. - Uses very few categories.
5Features of Our System
- Trains the student to develop reasoning habits
for determining countability. - Provides individualized help and exercise
sequences. - Written in Java to make it available via the
Internet. - Can be reused as a authoring tool to create other
CALL systems by simply editing the input file.
6Outline of the Presentation
- Literature Review
- Questionnaires and Interviews
- The Model
- The System
- The Demo
- The Authoring System
- The Formative Evaluation
- Conclusion and Future Tasks
7Literature Review ESL Books
- Thirteen ESL grammar books
- Label a group of nouns countable or
non-countable based on most frequently used
meanings, appearances, qualities Steer98,
EElbaum01, Lites90 - ?too many categories and too many exceptions.
- ?do not explain why the same noun can be both
countable and non-countable. - Assume that ESL students will view nouns the
same way native speakers will. Beason97 - ?difficult to interpret terms such as mass,
distinct, collective, specific,
particular, and too small to count.
8CALL System Review
- Ten systems
- Present a noun by itself method
- ? train students to determine the
countability of a noun without context. - No proper diagnoses to students answers
- ? they cannot learn anything from their
mistakes. - Is this noun countable?
- ? should avoid random guesses.
9Questionnaires
- To determine how English and Japanese speakers
view countability differently. - The questionnaire in English and Japanese
included twenty-eight words. - Asked
- Is it countable?
- Why?
10Questionnaire Results
- Native speakers cannot easily state definite
reasons for the countability of English nouns
except for material and product nouns. - Japanese people think every Japanese noun is
countable except those nouns referring to some
foods (rice, pasta, and noodles). - Japanese people do not have concepts of what
native speakers call material, general,
category, and specific.
11Follow-Up Interviews
- ESL students say
- there are too many disorganized categories.
- nouns they learned as non-countable are sometimes
used as countable nouns by native speakers. - ESL teachers tell students
- to remember the countability of each noun
individually because the countability of each
noun comes from its own history. - to just remember the categories given in ESL
books.
12The Model
- Observed nouns and their countability in a
- Japanese-English dictionary and discovered a
- commonality among non-countable nouns.
- Four categories
- Set/member - a set and its members countable
- Material a material or substance
non-countable - Concept - encompasses other sets of abstract
things non-countable - Functionality - denotes a functionality of other
sets of non-abstract things non-countable
13DeCEN System Main Features
- Based on the Irvine-Geneva strategy Bork92
- adaptive learning and individualized pacing
through analysis of student answers. - frequent interactions to provide help quickly and
to obtain as much information from the student as
possible. - avoiding simple multiple choice questions so that
useful information about student misconceptions
can be gathered. - mastery learning to prevent students from moving
onto the next part with incomplete knowledge.
14DeCEN System Implementation and Execution
Environment
- Java 2 SDK 1.4
- Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater
- Netscape 7.0
- Java plug-in 1.4
-
15DeCEN System Pedagogy
- Track 1 Learn the model
- Track2 Exercises the model with a new noun
- Track 3 Exercises the model with known nouns
- The student can try the same question up to a
certain number of times. - The student can go to the next track only when
the number of mistakes is below a certain number.
Otherwise, the system has her review the material
again. - Mastery of the system means that the student has
passed all the three tracks.
16Demonstration of the System
- http//public.csusm.edu/rika/intro.html
17Skeletal Version Authoring Tool
- The only tool allowing Bork-style systems to be
built as a Java applet. - Specify all information about the system in the
input file. No need to change the program. - The program checks for syntax errors in the input
file and gives error messages. - Available items and tools message area, picture
area, label, rectangle, button, group of check
boxes, group of menus, input field, pop-up
window, hint, count, repeat, hide, reset, and
show.
18Input File Example
- Declarations of frame and items
environments - Set up the
frame
frame(700, 500, white, yes) - Declare items'
environments ms
g_message(370, 50, 310, 275, white, black,
16times_romanplain) pic_picture(10, 50, 325,
325) btn_Next(Next gt, 350, 470, 90, 25,
light_gray, black, 16times_romanbold) -
Specifications of lessons
- Specify the first
screen name firs
t(screen_1) ------------------------- screen 1
-------------------------------- ltscreen_1gt msg_me
ssage(The circle named "ltUgtApplianceslt/gt"
contains all kinds of appliances.) pic_picture(ap
pliance1.jpg) btn_Next(screen_2) ---------------
---------- screen 2 ------------------------------
-- ltscreen_2gt msg_message(ltRgtPlease make one
sentence. Please click the Submit
button.lt/gt) pic_picture(test.jpg) btn_Next(scree
n_3)
19Formative Evaluation
Evaluation summaries for Track 1, Track2, Track3,
overall, and Interface.
- 16 students
- Used the system for 45 minutes to 2 hours
20(No Transcript)
21Resulting Changes
- More explanations in the introduction of Track 2.
- Better customized hints for Track 2.
- At the end of Track 1, remind the student a
usage of a noun cannot belong to more than one
category.
22Future Tasks
- Find out whether DeCEN helps students understand
countability better than classroom instructions.
- Have teachers use the authoring tool.
- Graphical user interface of the authoring tool.
- Use of database to save students records.
- Evaluation with more students to decide
- Better to use less technical terms (e.g. group
and individual object) ? - Split some of the tracks into sub-tracks?
- Fix Bugs.
23Conclusion
- DeCEN solved a problem for ESL students by
- Introducing the new model, which has only four
simple categories. - Making it clear that the meanings of nouns in
context determine countability. - Giving the diagrams of the categories.
- Continuously giving help as hints and
explanations. - Allowing students to proceed at their own paces
and with individualized tracks. - Providing ESL teachers a tool to discuss the
countability system with their students.
24Conclusion (Cont.)
- The authoring tool of the DeCEN system help
- designers by
- Providing a set of the items and tools needed to
develop their own programs without knowledge of
computer programming. - Proving error messages for designers to help them
fix errors in their input files. - No other authoring tool can create, as Java
- applets, tutoring systems that embody the
- Irvine-Geneva Strategy.
25Acknowledgement
- We would like to thank Alastair Milne of the
California State University, San Marcos for his
role in creating our model, reviewing the system,
and in reviewing the presentation.