Authoring support for Spanish language writers

Abstract Authoring support consists of (semi)automated aids to be used at different stages during the writing process. Language information, however, tends to be restricted to areas such as spelling and grammar checking or term banks, and text construction difficulties that writers face concerning the structure of particular genres, associated sentence formulations or genre-specific vocabulary have not received proper attention. An additional gap in the research is that this support is generally addressed to English language users. This paper addresses these concerns focusing on a particular genre: the company’s directors’ report, and on Spanish language writers writing in English. A custom-made monolingual corpus has been analyzed using Bhatia (1993, 2004) and Swales (1990, 2004) definitions of genre and move combined with theme characterization. Recurrent strings for each move/step, which are conventionally associated with each rhetorical unit, were identified and formulated as “meta-strings.” The bilingual glossary includes domain-specific items as well as move/step or genre-specific lexical and phraseological options, i.e., elements used irrespective of the business, places or people involved. The results are valuable by themselves, as an analysis of the genre, but also as the empirical basis for the authoring support tool that we present here, and as language training materials.

Download Full-text

¿Comprenderán Mis Amigos y La Familia? Analyzing Spanish Translations of Admission Materials for Latina/o Students Applying to 4-Year Institutions in the United States

Journal of Hispanic Higher Education ◽

10.1177/1538192718775478 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 195-209 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Zachary W. Taylor

Keyword(s):

English Language ◽

The United States ◽

Reading Level ◽

Spanish Language ◽

First Year ◽

Linguistic Capital ◽

Undergraduate Admissions ◽

Research And Practice ◽

Grade Reading Level ◽

Language Content

This study examines first-year undergraduate admissions materials from 325 bachelor-degree granting U.S. institutions, closely analyzing the English-language readability and Spanish-language readability and translation of these materials. Via Yosso’s linguistic capital, the results reveal 4.9% of first-year undergraduate admissions materials had been translated into Spanish, 4% of institutional admissions websites embed translation widgets, and the average readability of English-language content is above the 13th-grade reading level. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Download Full-text

Development and Reliability Testing of Spanish Language and English Language Versions of the Multidimensional Task Ability Profile

Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation ◽

10.1007/s10926-012-9395-8 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 220-227 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Joe L. Verna ◽

Leonard N. Matheson ◽

Sharon Gables ◽

RaNae Hause ◽

John M. Mayer

Keyword(s):

English Language ◽

Spanish Language ◽

Reliability Testing

Download Full-text

BORDER GUARDS’ COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL TERMINOLOGY: CHALLENGES AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

BORDER SECURITY AND MANAGEMENT ◽

10.17770/bsm.v3i8.5355 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (8) ◽

pp. 15-26

Author(s):

Marina Žukova

Keyword(s):

Present Article ◽

English Language ◽

The State ◽

Coast Guard ◽

Language Training ◽

National State ◽

Professional Performance ◽

Immigration Control ◽

Joint Operations ◽

The Eu

Knowledge of English professional terminology is one of the predominant factors for border guards’ successful professional performance during both border and immigration control carried out at their national state border and inside the country and also joint operations organised and implemented by the European Border and Coast Guard at the EU external borders. The present article suggests an overview of the results of the measures taken by the State Border Guard of Latvia in 2017-2020 to facilitate the improvement of Latvian border guards’ competence in English professional terminology. Based on the results of the survey the author puts forward suggestions for possible improvements in English language training and testing for border guards.

Download Full-text

ONTOLOGY-BASED GENERATION OF MULTILINGUAL QUESTIONS FOR ASSESSMENT IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes ◽

10.22190/jtesap2001001r ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 001

Author(s):

Maja Radović ◽

Nenad Petrović ◽

Milorad Tošić

Keyword(s):

Medical Education ◽

Knowledge Representation ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

English Language ◽

Automatic Generation ◽

Assessment Process ◽

Innovative Teaching ◽

Domain Specific ◽

Level Of Automation ◽

High Level

The requirements of state-of-the-art curricula and teaching processes in medical education have brought both new and improved the existing assessment methods. Recently, several promising methods have emerged, among them the Comprehensive Integrative Puzzle (CIP), which shows great potential. However, the construction of such questions requires high efforts of a team of experts and is time-consuming. Furthermore, despite the fact that English language is accepted as an international language, for educational purposes there is also a need for representing data and knowledge in native language. In this paper, we present an approach for automatic generation of CIP assessment questions based on using ontologies for knowledge representation. In this way, it is possible to provide multilingual support in the teaching and learning process because the same ontological concept can be applied to corresponding language expressions in different languages. The proposed approach shows promising results indicated by dramatic speeding up of construction of CIP questions compared to manual methods. The presented results represent a strong indication that adoption of ontologies for knowledge representation may enable scalability in multilingual domain-specific education regardless of the language used. High level of automation in the assessment process proven on the CIP method in medical education as one of the most challenging domains, promises high potential for new innovative teaching methodologies in other educational domains as well.

Download Full-text

Improving Aphasic Speech Recognition by Using Novel Semi-Supervised Learning Methods on AphasiaBank for English and Spanish

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11198872 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (19) ◽

pp. 8872

Author(s):

Iván G. Torre ◽

Mónica Romero ◽

Aitor Álvarez

Keyword(s):

Speech Recognition ◽

Supervised Learning ◽

Automatic Speech Recognition ◽

English Language ◽

Spanish Language ◽

Learning Methods ◽

Text Data ◽

Lower Performance ◽

Recognition Systems ◽

Fine Tune

Automatic speech recognition in patients with aphasia is a challenging task for which studies have been published in a few languages. Reasonably, the systems reported in the literature within this field show significantly lower performance than those focused on transcribing non-pathological clean speech. It is mainly due to the difficulty of recognizing a more unintelligible voice, as well as due to the scarcity of annotated aphasic data. This work is mainly focused on applying novel semi-supervised learning methods to the AphasiaBank dataset in order to deal with these two major issues, reporting improvements for the English language and providing the first benchmark for the Spanish language for which less than one hour of transcribed aphasic speech was used for training. In addition, the influence of reinforcing the training and decoding processes with out-of-domain acoustic and text data is described by using different strategies and configurations to fine-tune the hyperparameters and the final recognition systems. The interesting results obtained encourage extending this technological approach to other languages and scenarios where the scarcity of annotated data to train recognition models is a challenging reality.

Download Full-text

Using Rubrics in A University EFL Process Writing Program: An Exploratory Case Study

ASIAN TEFL Journal of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics ◽

10.21462/asiantefl.v3i2.53 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Yamin Qian

Keyword(s):

Language Proficiency ◽

Academic Writing ◽

English Language ◽

Writing Process ◽

Writing Programs ◽

Data Set ◽

Writing Classes ◽

Peer Reviews ◽

Reflection Data ◽

Student Cohorts

While rubrics have been widely recognized as an effective instructional tool for teachers to evaluate students’ writing products, fewer studies explored how students use it for their writing process in an EFL university academic writing classes. This study explores the application of process-oriented rubrics in two EFL writing programs, and investigates whether English language proficiency, motivation to writing, and their previous experiences with writing programs would significantly affect the use of the rubrics. The participants (N=190) were from two student cohorts, each of which had 95 participants. The data set includes students’ self-, peer- use and the instructor’s use of the rubrics, and students’ written reflection upon peer feedbacks. The data showed that the rubrics can guide students to practice a writing process, and that the 20-item rubric was statistically reliable. The data of rubrics also showed that the participants were more critical on their peers’ writing, and the reflection data showed students’ awareness of revision strategies. The qualitative data seemed to suggest that peer reviews and reflections upon such reviews could enhance students' revision strategies. This article will conclude itself by providing some pedagogical suggestions in EFL contexts

Download Full-text

THE POTENTIAL OF INDEPENDENT WORK IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRAINING OF STUDENTS OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Naukovì zapiski Nacìonalʹnogo unìversitetu «Ostrozʹka akademìâ». Serìâ «Fìlologìâ» ◽

10.25264/2519-2558-2018-1(69)/1-212-215 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 (1(69)/1) ◽

pp. 212-215

Author(s):

Nataliia Korotka

Keyword(s):

English Language ◽

Educational Institutions ◽

Language Training ◽

Higher Educational Institutions ◽

Higher Educational ◽

Independent Work

Download Full-text

THE ISSUE OF EDUCATION AT A HIGHER ESTABLISHMENT AND SIMULTANEOUS LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Collection of Scientific Papers of Uman State Pedagogical University ◽

10.31499/2307-4906.3.2021.241563 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 54-63

Author(s):

Veronika Dmytruk ◽

Halyna Shevchyk

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Information Management ◽

English Language ◽

Educational Process ◽

Foreign Languages ◽

Language Training ◽

Management Information ◽

Factors Influencing

The article is devoted to the psychological and pedagogical substantiation of the expediency of learning foreign languages while studying in the institution of higher education. The authors analyse the current educational process in Ukrainian and identify the most important factors influencing the formation of qualified professionals and establish the role of foreign language in each of these factors. It was found that studying can be extremely intensified due to learning a foreign language. It is established that learning foreign languages increases a person’s ability to develop intellectually. Keywords: pedagogical psychology; institution of higher education; foreign language; English language; training intensification; motivation; information management; information gathering; information processing.

Download Full-text