Lexical Errors Research Articles

Lexical Error Guard: Leveraging Large Language Models for Enhanced ASR Error Correction

Error correction is a vital element in modern automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. A significant portion of ASR error correction work is closely integrated within specific ASR systems, which creates challenges for adapting these solutions to different ASR frameworks. This research introduces Lexical Error Guard (LEG), which leverages the extensive pre-trained knowledge of large language models (LLMs) and employs instructional learning to create an adaptable error correction system compatible with various ASR platforms. Additionally, a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method is utilized using quantized low-rank adaptation (QLoRA) to facilitate fast training of the system. Tested on the LibriSpeech data corpus, the results indicate that LEG improves ASR results when used with various Whisper model sizes. Improvements in WER are made, with a decrease from 2.27% to 2.21% on the “Test Clean” dataset for Whisper Large with beam search. Improvements on the “Test Other” dataset for Whisper Large with beam search are also made, from 4.93% to 4.72%.

A robust temporal map of speech monitoring from planning to articulation

Speakers continuously monitor their own speech to optimize fluent production, but the precise timing and underlying variables influencing speech monitoring remain insufficiently understood. Through two EEG experiments, this study aimed to provide a comprehensive temporal map of monitoring processes ranging from speech planning to articulation.In both experiments, participants were primed to switch the consonant onsets of target word pairs read aloud, eliciting speech errors of either lexical or articulatory-phonetic (AP) origin. Experiment I used pairs of the same stimuli words, creating lexical or non-lexical errors when switching initial consonants, with the degree of shared AP features not fully balanced but considered in the analysis. Experiment II followed a similar methodology but used different words in pairs for the lexical and non-lexical conditions, fully orthogonalizing the number of shared AP features.As error probability is higher in trials primed to result in lexical versus non-lexical errors and AP-close compared to AP-distant errors, more monitoring is required for these conditions. Similarly, error trials require more monitoring compared to correct trials. We used high versus low error probability on correct trials and errors versus correct trials as indices of monitoring.Across both experiments, we observed that on correct trials, lexical error probability effects were present during initial stages of speech planning, while AP error probability effects emerged during speech motor preparation. In contrast, error trials showed differences from correct utterances in both early and late speech motor preparation and during articulation. These findings suggest that (a) response conflict on ultimately correct trials does not persist during articulation; (b) the timecourse of response conflict is restricted to the time window during which a given linguistic level is task-relevant (early on for response appropriateness-related variables and later for articulation-relevant variables); and (c) monitoring during the response is primarily triggered by pre-response monitoring failure. These results support that monitoring in language production is temporally distributed and rely on multiple mechanisms.

An Investigation into the Feedback of Automated Writing Evaluation System on EFL Learners’ Writing

Computer technology has developed at a rapid pace in recent decades. The combination of artificial intelligence and writing teaching has become an important development trend. For better utilization of Automated Writing Evaluation System in teaching, the quality of its feedback on various types of errors in compositions is one of the issues worth exploring. In order to investigate this issue, this study compares the diagnosis of EFL learners' compositions by Automated Writing Evaluation System with the actual errors in the compositions, and calculates the Precision and Recall of the iWrite system's feedback. Unlike previous studies, this study synthesizes macro discourse elements such as propositional logic, across-sentence logic, and discourse structure, and categorizes the actual errors in learners' compositions into seven kinds. The results show that the iWrite system performs excellent in detecting three kinds of errors, which are lexical errors, grammatical errors, and other detail-type errors, and is moderately effective in detecting pragmatic errors, while it fails to provide feedback on propositional logic, discourse cohesion and coherence, and paragraph structure, which are the high-level error types, indicating that iWrite system is completely unable to capture errors in terms of macro-discourse elements. These findings provide a strong basis for improving Automated Writing Evaluation System, and at the same time provide English teachers with a reference for writing teaching, which helps to better serve the field of foreign language education.

Exploring Sources of Errors in L3 English Production of Natives of Moroccan Arabic

Language learners’ writing products can provide insights into how these learners acquire the target language through the analysis of the committed errors. Indeed, research has revealed that error analysis in writing essays is crucial for understanding and improving language acquisition by identifying common errors, and their sources, and informing teaching strategies to address these issues. The current paper aims to identify, describe and analyze errors committed by Moroccan secondary school students in writing. The study also attempts to determine some of the possible causes of the errors to offer an understanding of how linguistic interference influences the foreign language learning process. To this end, a sample of tasks written in English by a group of 20 secondary school students was collected. Then, an analysis procedure was conducted to analyze errors and explain their sources. Hence, this study adopts a mixed-method approach design to generate qualitative as well as quantitative data by identifying error categories and calculating the total number of error types and sources, respectively. The findings show that the errors are committed both at the word as well as the sentential level including lexical, grammatical, substance, and syntactic errors. Besides, the results indicate that learners commit errors in their English writings partly due to interference of Moroccan or Standard Arabic and French, but mostly due to other developmental sources within the scope of the target language. These findings offer valuable insights into how learners acquire a second or foreign language and what obstacles they encounter in the learning process and, thus, could suggest some implications to reduce the errors caused by negative language transfer and improve learners’ language proficiency.

The Accuracy and Consistency of Machine Translation Engines: Case Study of Translating Economic & Statistical Texts from English into Arabic

Objectives: This study assesses the precision and consistency of the Google Translate engine and tool in translating statistical and economic texts from English into Arabic. Methods: The descriptive analytical approach was employed in this project, and the study sample consists of five texts extracted from statistical and economic research. Results: The study revealed that the Google translation tool faced numerous challenges and contained lexical, grammatical, and consistency errors. Besides, a grand challenge might arise from the idioms and abbreviations, as Google Translate would use word-for-word translation and render them inaccurate meaning. In some cases, the abbreviations in the source text (ST) would be displayed as they are in the target text (TT), In other cases, Google Translate would do a deep search to render their meanings in the TT. Further, Google Translate has a significant problem rendering technical and specialized terms into the TT, and in some cases, it doesn’t consider the contexts and has a lexical choice challenge. Finally, Google Translate renders some terms with different meanings within the same text. Conclusions: Idioms and abbreviations present a grand challenge, as Google Translate would use word-for-word translation and render them in an inaccurate meaning. In some cases, the abbreviations in the ST are rendered as they are in the TT, and in other cases, Google Translate would do a deep search to render their meanings in the TT.

The Enduring Challenge of Literacy Issues in Adulthood: Investigating Spelling Deficits among Dyslexic Italian University Students.

The issue of literacy challenges among dyslexic adults remains a significant concern. This study investigates spelling deficits among highly educated adults with dyslexia learning a transparent orthography. Thirty-eight Italian dyslexic university students were examined and compared to a group of age- and education-matched typical readers. Firstly, we analyzed spelling performance using a Passage Dictation Test. Additionally, lists of words varying in length and word frequency were dictated under two experimental conditions: a normal condition (NC) and an articulatory suppression condition (ASC). The ASC assessed the participants' ability to spell with interference to the phonological (sublexical) spelling procedure, i.e., the most likely compensated spelling strategy of Italian dyslexic spellers. The results clearly indicated that, in spelling the meaningful passage, dyslexic participants underperformed compared to the controls, with a prevalence of lexical errors, despite the comparison with the normative reference data showing only mild spelling difficulties. In spelling isolated words in normal conditions, dyslexic participants performed within the reference norms and as accurately as control participants across all stimuli (short words, high- and low-frequency words), except for long words, where their spelling difficulties were evident. Articulatory suppression significantly impaired dyslexics' performance on short stimuli, reducing the usual sublexical advantage associated with them, and exacerbated misspellings on long words. Additionally, articulatory suppression disproportionately affected dyslexics' performance on high-frequency words, diminishing the typical lexical advantage associated with these words. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical, clinical, and educational implications.

Investigating EFL Instructors’ Use of Oral Corrective Feedback Types in the Classrooms

This study investigates EFL university instructors’ understanding and conceptualization of oral corrective feedback (OCF) vis-à-vis their teaching peculiarities. Participants in the current study involve 140 EFL instructors from various colleges and faculties with various specialities in universities in Kurdistan Region, Iraq. Among them, 87 participants were males and 53 participants were females, and they aged between 23 and 60. The instrument used in this study for data collection includes questionnaires, which have been adopted from previous research (e.g., Fukuda, 2004; Park, 2010; Yüksel et al., 2021). The results show that most of the participants tend to yield OCF moderately, and a considerable number of the instructors would correct students’ oral errors quite often. Moreover, the instructors tend to orient to global errors more than local errors. The instructors also would practice delayed OCF more often than immediate OCF. Furthermore, the most frequently deployed strategies involve clarification requests and recast for grammatical errors and recast and metalinguistic feedback for both phonological and lexical errors. Finally, the main source of providing feedback is the teacher.

Lexical richness in Lithuanian beginner learners’ spoken and written language: a focus on production

ABSTRACT The present research explores the productive vocabulary that beginner learners of Lithuanian as a foreign language use when speaking and writing. This study is based on the newly developed Lithuanian Learner Corpus (LLC) and uses its subcorpus of beginner texts (103,148 tokens). It measures lexical richness in Lithuanian learner language (LLL) by examining lexical variation, distribution of lexical word classes, lexical errors, and formulaic language in spoken and written language. The results show that beginner learners of Lithuanian use minimal lexical resources, and lexis used for pragmatic purposes is scarcely employed in either mode.

THE LEXICAL ERRORS MADE BY THE EIGHTH GRADERS OF SMP PGRI 1 PALEMBANG IN TRANSLATING NARRATIVE TEXT ENTITLED "THE FOX AND THE GRAPES" FROM ENGLISH INTO INDONESIAN

The objective of this research aims to know the types, the causes of lexical error found in translating narrative text, and the steps of the implication theory for teaching English as a foreign language. This research used a descriptive qualitative approach with the strategy of Case Study. This research used a descriptive qualitative approach with the strategy of Case Study in which analyzing by describing the lexical errors that student produces in translating narrative text from English into Indonesian. The source of data is the narrative text entitled "The Fox and the Grapes". The data were collected by using review book and interview. Based on the research, the researcher found The errors included Prefix type (5 errors), Misselection (2 errors), Using wrong near-synonym (1 error), semantically determined word selection (28 error). Errors committed due to the learner’s inability to recall, errors caused by confusion between formally similar items. The theoretical implication for language teaching. The finding of this research hopefully can give a contribution to the English teaching and learning process.

ПАРОНИМИЧЕСКИЕ ОШИБКИ В РЕЧИ ИНОСТРАННЫХ СТУДЕНТОВ: ОПИСАНИЕ, КЛАССИФИКАЦИЯ, ПРИЧИНЫ ПОЯВЛЕНИЯ

The article examines and analyzes the main types of lexical errors in the speech of foreign students, the appearance of which is determined phonetically or graphically. The authors identify the main reasons leading to the occurrence of such errors in the speech of students at different levels of proficiency in the Russian language. The article also proposes a classification of paronymic errors depending on the underlying cause and the psychological mechanism of their occurrence.

EFL Learners’ English Writing Feedback and Their Perception of Using ChatGPT

This study aims to investigate the utilization of AI-assisted feedback by EFL college learners in their English writing. Specifically, the research sought to explore how writing assisted by ChatGPT improves students’ writing skills in comparison to peer feedback. Additionally, the study aimed to understand the learners’ perceptions regarding the use of ChatGPT in editing English writing. Participants were tasked with submitting their presentation scripts before their speaking exams. They received an instructional session on how to use the tool effectively and were told useful prompts for using ChatGPT. The collected writings were analyzed holistically by two experienced EFL instructors, and analytically by using Grammarly (2022), a free online grammar and spelling checker, to identify characteristics. The analysis revealed that there was a significant difference in holistic scores including content and organization. The experimental group who used the AI tool had significantly reduced grammatical and lexical errors. However, no significant difference between the groups was found in the word counts and use of vocabulary types. Additionally, reflections from participants indicates a positive attitude toward the use of AI-assisted feedback in English writing but there were some concerns about reliability and over-reliance. The study suggests pedagogical implications for the effective integration of AI-assistance in English writing based on these findings.

An Analysis of the Problems Encountering Libyan Pre-service Translators in the Faculty of Arts, the University of Benghazi, in Translating Arabic Texts into English

This paper aims to explore the deficiencies that translation students encounter when transferring texts from their L1, Arabic, into English, their L2. They make mistakes when they translate in terms of syntactic, non-equivalent lexical, and synonymy errors. Another aim of this study is to review the literature focusing on the interference of the translator’s L1 in the translation process and therefore its impact on the translation outputs. In order to investigate this interference, we have collected five Arabic sentences from the internet. Ten randomly students of English were chosen as a sample of this study from Semester four at the University of Benghazi (El-Marj Campus). They were asked to translate these sentences into English without consulting other people. Only Arabic-English dictionaries were allowed in order to see how they could deal with them. The results of this investigation showed that these students failed to provide good translations of these sentences due to the interference of their mother language, Arabic, to the translation process.

An analysis of English as a foreign language undergraduate students' written errors

Writing is an intricate process in the first language and its intricacy increases when writing in the targeted language. Although Kurdish students of English study English writing at most levels of their education in Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), it has been observed that they commit serious errors even in the basics of writing. These errors may influence their writing in English and their overall English language proficiency level. Nevertheless, meticulous research in the arena of error analysis is scanty in the KRI context compared to the body of research conducted in this area in the Arab world. This study was undertaken to analyze the errors committed by English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) undergraduate students to recognize the most and the least prevalent errors committed by students and present and explain some possible causes and sources of those errors. The study investigated errors in a collection of 57 argumentative essays. Four categories of errors were taken into consideration, namely, grammatical, lexical, spelling, and punctuation as well as their subcategories. Frequencies and percentages of errors were first recognized, and then the common subcategories of each of the errors were tabulated, explained, and described with examples from the corpus. The reported results showed that the overall frequency and percentage of the errors were high and grammatical errors were the most common. Lexical errors were found to be the least common errors in students' written productions. Additionally, the most prevalent subcategories of the errors were presented and interpreted. The study concluded that the major causes of written errors in the KRI context were both interlingual and intralingual errors.

Exploring Spanish writing abilities of children with developmental language disorder in expository texts.

Numerous studies have shown that children with developmental language disorder (DLD), in addition to oral language difficulties, exhibit impaired writing abilities. Their texts contain problems in grammar, organization, cohesion, and length of written output. However, most of these studies have been conducted with English speakers. English is characterized by complex phonological structure, opaque orthography, poor morphology and strict word order. The aim of this research is to observe the writing abilities of children with DLD in a language with simple phonological structure, transparent orthography, rich morphology and flexible word order like Spanish in the production of expository texts. Twenty-six children with DLD (mean age in months = 128.85) and 26 age-and sex-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age in months = 124.61) wrote an expository text about their favorite animal. In order to analyze how the two groups plan and encode written texts, we looked at word frequency and sentence structure, grammatical complexity and lexical density, and omissions and errors. Compared to the TD group, the children with DLD omitted more content words; made more errors with functional words, verb conjugation and inflectional morphemes, and made a large number of spelling errors. Moreover, they wrote fewer words, fewer sentences, and less structurally and lexically complex texts. These results show that children with DLD who speak a transparent orthography language such as Spanish also have difficulties in most language areas when producing written texts. Our findings should be considered when planning and designing interventions.

Tracking Lexical and Semantic Prediction Error Underlying the N400 Using Artificial Neural Network Models of Sentence Processing.

Recent research has shown that the internal dynamics of an artificial neural network model of sentence comprehension displayed a similar pattern to the amplitude of the N400 in several conditions known to modulate this event-related potential. These results led Rabovsky et al. (2018) to suggest that the N400 might reflect change in an implicit predictive representation of meaning corresponding to semantic prediction error. This explanation stands as an alternative to the hypothesis that the N400 reflects lexical prediction error as estimated by word surprisal (Frank et al., 2015). In the present study, we directly model the amplitude of the N400 elicited during naturalistic sentence processing by using as predictor the update of the distributed representation of sentence meaning generated by a sentence gestalt model (McClelland et al., 1989) trained on a large-scale text corpus. This enables a quantitative prediction of N400 amplitudes based on a cognitively motivated model, as well as quantitative comparison of this model to alternative models of the N400. Specifically, we compare the update measure from the sentence gestalt model to surprisal estimated by a comparable language model trained on next-word prediction. Our results suggest that both sentence gestalt update and surprisal predict aspects of N400 amplitudes. Thus, we argue that N400 amplitudes might reflect two distinct but probably closely related sub-processes that contribute to the processing of a sentence.

Speech competence of judges' professional decisions during martial law

The article defines the importance of speaking competence of judges to ensure compliance with the requirements of current laws and regulations. Special attention is paid to the use of the Ukrainian language in practical judicial activity under the new circumstances of the administration of justice under martial law. The purpose of the article is to confirm modern approaches to deepening the speech competence of specialists in the field of law during martial law. Studying research in the field of speech competence of lawyers has shown that scientists consider various aspects of language expertise of law enforcement officers. The relevance of this research topic is due to the importance of analysis from the point of view of the level of speech competence of court decisions, especially during martial law. To conduct a speech assessment, the texts of four decisions of courts of different jurisdictions during the martial law of 2023, which are freely available, and which were randomly selected, were analyzed. The texts of the resolutions are written in business language with the necessary lexical legal content, clear and balanced. Summarized information on selected court cases according to developed criteria for speech assessment: the city of the court and its level, the date of the decision, statistical characteristics of the content by the number of words, signs and lines, grammatical, spelling, punctuation, stylistic, lexical and speech errors determined by the text of a technical nature. Identified errors are summarized and recommendations are given for the use of correct language forms according to Ukrainian spelling. Increasing the level of speech competence of specialists in the field of law in business writing is one of the important tasks of higher education, which requires the constant attention of scientific and pedagogical workers in the organizational, tactical provision of law enforcement activities during martial law.

AN ANALYSIS OF INTERLINGUAL VS INTRALINGUAL ERRORS MADE BY ARAB LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AND TEACHING STRATEGIES TO REDUCE THE ERRORS

Arabic students learning English as a second language tend to commit several errors. This paper explores some of the common interlingual versus intralingual errors made by Arabic learners of English. The authors consider that by addressing morphological, lexical, and semantic errors, English teachers can help Arabic learners develop a more comprehensive and nuanced command of the English language, leading to improved communication skills in various contexts. The instructional strategies offered in this paper provide insights to English teachers and Arabic tertiary-level students on reducing or eliminating these errors. The teaching tips presented in this paper are also helpful to both seasoned and new teachers to reduce errors made by Arabic students learning English as a second language.

Investigating errors made by English as a foreign language students during online collaborative writing

This study focused on investigating common writing errors made by a group of Thai students who participated in online collaborative writing using Google Docs, and understanding their satisfaction and attitudes on this writing approach. The participants consisted 32 Thai first-year English major students who were purposively selected from their Writing I course. The researcher collected and analyzed eight argumentative pieces of writing, identifying a total of 484 errors. The most frequently occurring error areas were incomplete sentences (15.75%), spelling mistakes (13.50%), and word choice issues (12.25%), with grammatical errors being the most prevalent (72%). Following grammatical errors were lexical (12%) and mechanical errors (4%). To gauge students' satisfactions and attitudes, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were employed. The findings revealed that the students were highly satisfied with online collaborative writing with an average satisfaction score of 3.50. Overall, the students exhibited a positive attitude towards online collaborative writing, finding it useful due to its flexibility in terms of allowing them to work from anywhere at any time and for its ability to boost their motivation. The study's findings provide valuable insights for English teaching professionals in Thailand to consider when instructing students in writing.

Turkish EFL Learners’ Perceptions and Preferences of Written Corrective Feedback

Written corrective feedback (WCF) has gained considerable attention from both researchers and teachers in the field of English language teaching (ELT). Although a large bulk of research on WCF has focused on the link between different feedback types and language development, more research is needed to understand how language learners perceive written corrective feedback and what feedback practices they favor more than others. Therefore, this study aims to investigate Turkish EFL learners’ perceptions and preferences of written corrective feedback in terms of the feedback strategies employed in their classrooms as well as their revision practices upon getting feedback. 90 Turkish Intermediate EFL undergraduates from a public university in Turkey completed a 21-item Likert-scale questionnaire online. Using descriptive statistics, the questionnaire data were analyzed. The findings showed that the learners’ perceptions and their teachers’ feedback practices mostly aligned, and most learners preferred to receive comprehensive and indirect feedback that focuses on grammatical, mechanical, and lexical errors rather than organization and content. These findings highlighted the importance of learner expectations in relation to the perceived efficacy of feedback practices.

The impact of language learning strategies and motivation on L2 writers’ lexical accuracy in response to WCF

The role individual differences play in developing learners’ L2 has received sufficient attention, but only few studies have addressed the relationship between these differences and learners’ lexical development. Accordingly, this study investigates the influence of two learner differences, namely language learning strategies (LLS) and motivation on reducing 63 L2 learners’ lexical errors revised in response to coded teacher feedback. Data was collected from a pretest essay and a survey about students’ motivation to learn. Students received training sessions on how to apply LLS to revise lexical errors in response to coded teacher feedback and filled in a questionnaire about the strategies they used for error correction. After training, students wrote an immediate and delayed post-test essays which were used to monitor any development in their lexical performance. Analysis of students’ errors on the three testing sessions revealed that LLS significantly reduced “connotation”, “unnecessary”, informal, and “general” word errors at different post-tests. Moreover, different factors (feedback method, revision techniques, and sources of revision) influenced students’ lexical error revision. Finally, motivation subscales and total scores showed significant associations with the different types of lexical errors at the pretest; however, at the post-test, a higher total score was significantly associated with lower frequency of “collocation” errors.