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. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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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.

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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.


1
CALICO 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

2
Research in Multiple Fields
  • This presentation describes a project that
    combines research in linguistics, educational
    psychology and computer science.

3
Background
  • 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.

4
Features 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.

5
Features 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.

6
Outline of the Presentation
  • Literature Review
  • Questionnaires and Interviews
  • The Model
  • The System
  • The Demo
  • The Authoring System
  • The Formative Evaluation
  • Conclusion and Future Tasks

7
Literature 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.

8
CALL 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.

9
Questionnaires
  • 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?

10
Questionnaire 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.

11
Follow-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.

12
The 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

13
DeCEN 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.

14
DeCEN System Implementation and Execution
Environment
  • Java 2 SDK 1.4
  • Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater
  • Netscape 7.0
  • Java plug-in 1.4

15
DeCEN 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.

16
Demonstration of the System
  • http//public.csusm.edu/rika/intro.html

17
Skeletal 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.

18
Input 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)
19
Formative 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)
21
Resulting 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.

22
Future 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.

23
Conclusion
  • 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.

24
Conclusion (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.

25
Acknowledgement
  • 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.
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