Syntactic Simplicity Research Articles

Evaluation of split-and-rephrase output of the knowledge extraction tool in the intelligent tutoring system

Various approaches to text simplification have been proposed in an attempt to increase text readability. The rephrasing of syntactically and semantically complex structures is still challenging. A pedagogically motivated simplified version of the same text can have both positive and negative side effects. On the one hand, it can facilitate reading comprehension because of much shorter sentences and a limited vocabulary, but on the other hand, the simplified text often lacks coherence, unity and style. Therefore, reasonable trade-offs among linguistic simplicity, naturalness and informativeness are highly needed. This is a survey paper that discusses state-of-the-art approaches to sentence/text simplification and evaluation methods, along with an empirical evaluation of our approach. The quality of sentence splitting, using the knowledge extraction tool SAAT was compared to state-of-the-art syntactic simplification systems. The research was carried out on the WikiSplit, the HSplit and MinWikiSplit simplification corpora. Automatic metrics for the HSplit showed that the SAAT outperformed other TS systems in all categories. For the WikiSplit dataset, automatic metrics scores were slightly lower than that of the baseline system DisSim. However, the human evaluation showed that DisSim outperformed the SAAT in terms of simplicity and grammar. The quality of AG18copy output corresponded to that of the SAAT. The inter-annotator agreement was calculated. Research limitations as well as suggestions for future research were also provided.

Effects of Task Complexity on Text Easibility and Coherence of EFL Learners’ Narrative Writing

This study was carried out to examine the effects of task complexity on text easibility and coherence in narrative writing of EFL learners. Data were collected from 41 Turkish EFL learners during a writing course. Task complexity was operationalized at two levels as a complex and simple task based on the resource-dispersing variables of Robinson’s the Triadic Componential Framework, +/- task structure. Accordingly, a colorful picture was first illustrated on the board, and students were asked to examine the picture for five minutes (complex task /-TS). They were then asked to write a story based on the picture they had seen (simple task /+TS). Two weeks later, they were given a sheet involving 16 pictures designed in an order and asked to narrate a story based on these pictures. Their essays were analyzed by the researcher and another rater in terms of coherence through an analytic rubric. An automated program was used to evaluate the essays for text easibility indices involving the indices of narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, and deep cohesion. The results analyzed with a Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed that complexity of the task had a statistically significant effect on some indices of text easibility such as word concreteness, and referential cohesion, whereas other indices, narrativity, syntactic simplicity, and deep cohesion, and coherence in their writing production were not affected by the complexity of the task at a significant level. However, it can be concluded that students’ texts produced in simple tasks are easier to comprehend.

An Introduction to Multilevel Analyses of Text Readability in Accounting and Finance

ABSTRACTThe present study introduces an assessment that includes multiple measures of language and discourse within the theoretical frameworks of comprehension in education and cognitive science. We utilize an automated textual assessment tool, Coh-Metrix, to analyze the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) sections of annual reports to determine if significant differences in text readability are present between bankrupt and nonbankrupt companies. When applying Coh-Metrix indices, the MD&A sections of nonbankrupt companies appear to be easier to understand in terms of word concreteness, referential and deep (or causal) cohesion, and syntactic simplicity. More specifically, the MD&A sections of nonbankrupt companies contain more concrete wording, simpler syntactic structures, more word co-references to tie words and ideas, and more causal and intentional connectives to establish causal and logical relationships within the text.

Fine-Grained Simplification of Medical Documents.

Easy access to medical and health information for children, foreigners and patients is an important issue for the modern society and research. Indeed, misunderstanding of medical and health information by patients may have a negative impact on their healthcare process and health. Even if several simplification guidelines exist, they are difficult to use by medical experts (i.e. lack of time, difficulty to respect the criteria). Existing simplification systems mainly address some lexical or syntactic transformations. We propose to combine lexical and syntactic simplifications within one rule-based system and to make the process fine-grained thanks to a better control of the grammaticality of sentences.

An analysis of Macau’s Joint Admission Examination–English

This study examined the evidence for the validity of the content of the Joint Admission Examination-English (JAE-E) developed for university admissions in Macau. The areas of investigation were the linguistic characteristics of the test, the alignment between the test and CEFR levels, and the comparison between JAE-E and other admission examinations. Five experienced English teachers from Macau were recruited to provide expert judgments. In addition to the judgments, two instruments used were Coh-Metrix and CEFR scales with descriptors. Results showed that generally the JAE-E was valid in terms of its content. The Coh-Metrix results suggested that the tests were suitable in terms of narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, and deep cohesion (although not in terms of referential cohesion). In terms of CEFR alignment, the test was at B1 level for reading and C1 level for writing. Finally, suggestions for improvements were put forward in terms of integrated skills, scenario-based assessment, and technology.

When text simplification is not enough: could a graph-based visualization facilitate consumers' comprehension of dietary supplement information?

ObjectiveDietary supplements are widely used. However, dietary supplements are not always safe. For example, an estimated 23 000 emergency room visits every year in the United States were attributed to adverse events related to dietary supplement use. With the rapid development of the Internet, consumers usually seek health information including dietary supplement information online. To help consumers access quality online dietary supplement information, we have identified trustworthy dietary supplement information sources and built an evidence–based knowledge base of dietary supplement information—the integrated DIetary Supplement Knowledge base (iDISK) that integrates and standardizes dietary supplement related information across these different sources. However, as information in iDISK was collected from scientific sources, the complex medical jargon is a barrier for consumers’ comprehension. The objective of this study is to assess how different approaches to simplify and represent dietary supplement information from iDISK will affect lay consumers’ comprehension.Materials and MethodsUsing a crowdsourcing platform, we recruited participants to read dietary supplement information in 4 different representations from iDISK: (1) original text, (2) syntactic and lexical text simplification (TS), (3) manual TS, and (4) a graph–based visualization. We then assessed how the different simplification and representation strategies affected consumers’ comprehension of dietary supplement information in terms of accuracy and response time to a set of comprehension questions.ResultsWith responses from 690 qualified participants, our experiments confirmed that the manual approach, as expected, had the best performance for both accuracy and response time to the comprehension questions, while the graph–based approach ranked the second outperforming other representations. In some cases, the graph–based representation outperformed the manual approach in terms of response time.ConclusionsA hybrid approach that combines text and graph–based representations might be needed to accommodate consumers’ different information needs and information seeking behavior.

La riformulazione in inglese del discorso legale italiano come processo di ‘ELFentextualization’

This paper introduces a new model defined ELFentextualization , devised for the English reformulation of the Italian legal discourse in the field of Migration. It is meant as a pedagogical and practical tool that can help intercultural linguistic mediators increase their competence at the time of analysing and reproducing source texts for an audience of non-native English speakers. In particular, our model is adopted here for the retextualization into English as a ‘lingua franca’ (ELF) of a number of extracts from the ‘Bossi-Fini’ law and ‘Testo unico sull’immigrazione’, which indicate the actions that migrants have to follow to request residence document. After illustrating the theoretical grounds of the ELFentextualization process, this paper will examine the selected corpus of English retextualizations of Italian legal discourse. The comparison between the original and ‘ELFentextualized’ versions will exemplify that the latter are elaborated after an initial phase of ‘text analysis’, which is meant to infer the gist of the message. The essential pieces of information are then reconstructed by resorting to lexical and syntactic simplification, as well as to the macrorules for text summarization. Finally, this paper enquires into the initial phases of a reception study of the examined reformulations, which will help discuss the lingua-franca connotation of the English uses in the texts under examination.

Obecność polskich filmów w Niemczech w drugiej połowie lat 30. XX w. Odtworzenie zasad tłumaczenia napisowego

In the 1930s, when national animosities hampered the free circulation of films, only a few Polish titles were released on German screens. One of them is a Polish production from 1936 with star-studded cast titled His Great Love . Preserved in the Polish archive, a copy with German subtitles served as research material and provided the basis for the analyses presented in this paper. The texts of the German subtitles on the tape were precisely noted, after which the number of characters in each of them was counted. They were transcribed with the original division into individual inscriptions and verses. The initial and final codes of each subtitle were also written down. Owing to this, the display time of each subtitle could be estimated. The data on the number of characters in each verse and the time of its display made it possible to calculate the assumed reading rate. The transcription of the characters’ original statements was obtained from the Polish copy. In this way, a tabular list of texts was created. With such research material, it was possible to (1) determine the technical aspects of subtitling, (2) conduct a quantitative comparative analysis of the initial and target texts, and (3) reconstruct the translation strategies and techniques applied. The research showed that the assumed reading rate at that time was about 10 characters per second, which was extremely convenient for the viewers. As a result of the comparative analysis of the output and target texts, it was found that 37.5-38% of dialogues were omitted, but without much harm to the viewer. The result of the abbreviations found in the target text from the 1930s fits into the 30-40% omission range for contemporary subtitles. The identification and interpretation of the translation techniques used demonstrated that the translator of the film studied resorted to the same techniques that are used by contemporary subtitling translators to obtain a compact target text: partial reduction, condensation, paraphrase, lexical or syntactic simplification, and elimination. What is interesting, they resemble contemporary subtitles more than intertitles used in 1930, i.e. only several years earlier than the subtitles for His Great Love .

A type-and-effect system for object initialization

Every newly created object goes through several initialization states: starting from a state where all fields are uninitialized until all of them are assigned. Any operation on the object during its initialization process, which usually happens in the constructor via this , has to observe the initialization states of the object for correctness, i.e. only initialized fields may be used. Checking safe usage of this statically, without manual annotation of initialization states in the source code, is a challenge, due to aliasing and virtual method calls on this . Mainstream languages either do not check initialization errors, such as Java, C++, Scala, or they defend against them by not supporting useful initialization patterns, such as Swift. In parallel, past research has shown that safe initialization can be achieved for varying degrees of expressiveness but by sacrificing syntactic simplicity. We approach the problem by upholding local reasoning about initialization which avoids whole-program analysis, and we achieve typestate polymorphism via subtyping. On this basis, we put forward a novel type-and-effect system that can effectively ensure initialization safety while allowing flexible initialization patterns. We implement an initialization checker in the Scala 3 compiler and evaluate on several real-world projects.

Infant-directed speech as a simplified but not simple register: a longitudinal study of lexical and syntactic features.

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specific register that adults use to address infants, and it is characterised by prosodic exaggeration and lexical and syntactic simplification. Several authors have underlined that this simplified speech becomes more complex according to the infant's age. However, there is a lack of studies on lexical and syntactic modifications in Italian IDS during the first year of an infant's life. In the present study, 80 mother-infant dyads were longitudinally observed at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months during free-play interactions. Maternal vocal productions were subsequently coded. The results show an overall low lexical variability and syntactic complexity that identify speech to infants as a simplified register; however, the high occurrence of complex items and well-structured utterances suggests that IDS is not simple speech. Moreover, maternal IDS becomes more complex over time, but not linearly, with a maximum simplification in the second half of the first year.

Text Complexity Dynamics in Russian Textbooks on “Environmental Studies”. The Case of the 2nd Grade

To comprehend an academic text is one of the main tasks for pupils of both elementary and secondary schools. Developing of reading skills is viewed as one of the most important questions for teachers, scientists and is a cause for concern to schoolchildren's parents. The aim of the present research is to investigate the dynamics of text complexity in the textbook “Environmental studies” (written by A. Pleshakov, 2012) for pupils of the second grade of comprehensive schools. The textbook consists of two parts, with twelve texts in Part I and sixteen texts in Part II. The corpus compiled for the research comprises twenty-eight texts from the stated textbook. The academic year of second class pupils is divided into four quarters. Consequently, the first part of the textbook, that is 12 texts, is studied in the first two quarters – from September to December. The second part – 16 texts - in the third and fourth quarters: from January till May. The texts differ in syntactic structure and length. Syntactic simplicity was evaluated on the basis of the mean number of words in the sentence, number of syntactic structures, number of words before the predicate, and the number of simple and composite sentences. Contrastive analysis of texts in both parts did not reveal obvious dynamics in complexity. The texts in both parts tend to have similar quantity of simple and composite sentences. However, the texts from the first part of the textbook are shorter, but sentences are longer and they are more elaborated than sentences of the second part. Syntactic simplicity of texts varies across the textbook.

Exploring the Impersonal Judgments and Personal Preferences of Raters in Rater-Mediated Assessments With Unfolding Models.

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of unfolding models for evaluating the quality of ratings obtained in rater-mediated assessments. Two different judgmental processes can be used to conceptualize ratings: impersonal judgments and personal preferences. Impersonal judgments are typically expected in rater-mediated assessments, and these ratings reflect a cumulative response process. However, raters may also be influenced by their personal preferences in providing ratings, and these ratings may reflect a noncumulative or unfolding response process. The goal of rater training in rater-mediated assessments is to stress impersonal judgments represented by scoring rubrics and to minimize the personal preferences that may represent construct-irrelevant variance in the assessment system. In this study, we explore the use of unfolding models as a framework for evaluating the quality of ratings in rater-mediated assessments. Data from a large-scale assessment of writing in the United States are used to illustrate our approach. The results suggest that unfolding models offer a useful way to evaluate rater-mediated assessments in order to initially explore the judgmental processes underlying the ratings. The data also indicate that there are significant relationships between some essay features (e.g., word count, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, and verb cohesion) and essay orderings based on the personal preferences of raters. The implications of unfolding models for theory and practice in rater-mediated assessments are discussed.

Coh-Metrix를 통한 2017-2018 수능 영어 독해 지문 비교: 기초 산출치, 이독성, 용이성을 중심으로

Since the introduction of criterion-referenced evaluation into the English Section of the 2018 College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT), it has become more important than ever to maintain the same level of its difficulty each year. This study was designed to examine whether 2017 and 2018 CSAT reading passages do not differ in terms of text difficulty. Both unidimensional and multidimensional indices Coh-Metrix (Version 3.0) provides were used in this study. Descriptive indices involved the respective count and length of sentences and words. As unidimensional indices, the Coh-Metrix L2 Readability score as well as the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scores was measured. Indices for text easibility at different discourse levels (the surface structure, the textbase, the situation model, and the genre and rhetorical structure) were also included. Results showed that there were no significant differences between 2017 and 2018 passages. Compared with other easibility components (narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, and deep cohesion), referential cohesion was rather low in both 2017 and 2018. Some pedagogical implications are also provided.

Subordination as a potential marker of complexity in serious and popular fiction: a corpus stylistic approach to the testing of literary critical claims

In this paper, we use a corpus stylistic methodology to investigate whether serious (i.e., ‘literary’) fiction is syntactically more complex than popular (i.e., ‘genre’) fiction. This is on the basis of literary critical claims that the structural complexity of serious fiction is one of the features that distinguishes it from popular literature (which, by contrast, is seen as easier to read). We compare the serious and popular fiction sections of the Lancaster Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation corpus (see Semino and Short, 2004 ) against various samples of the British National Corpus available in Wmatrix ( Rayson, 2009 ), focussing particularly (though not exclusively) on the identification of subordinating conjunctions. We find that, on this measure, there is no basis for claiming that serious fiction is any more complex syntactically than popular fiction. We then investigate the issue in relation to a specific genre of popular fiction, Chick Lit. Here we find that while syntactic simplicity exists, this is at a phrasal rather than a clausal level. We argue that by using a corpus stylistic approach we are able to qualify accurately certain literary critical claims about syntactic complexity as a distinguishing feature of serious and popular fiction, and to propose a refined hypothesis which might be used in further studies of the syntactic structures used in these two text types.

Less is more: A rule-based syntactic simplification module for improved text-to-pictograph translation

In order to enable or facilitate online communication for people with an intellectual disability, the Text-to-Pictograph translation system automatically translates Dutch written text into a series of Sclera or Beta pictographs. The baseline system presents the reader with a more or less verbatim pictograph-per-word translation. As a result, long and complex input sentences lead to long and complex pictograph translations, leaving the end users confused and distracted. To overcome these problems, we developed a rule-based simplification system for Dutch Text-to-Pictograph translation. By using recursion and applying the simplification operations in a logical way, only one syntactic parse is needed per message. Promising results are obtained.

CORRELATING WRITER’S BLOCK AND ESL LEARNERS’ WRITING QUALITY

Despite the importance of writing in the language learners’ development, there are difficulties faced by English as a Second Language (ESL) learners that stem from various factors. One of them is the presence of writer’s block that could affect writing quality. Therefore, this study aims to describe writer’s block, along with a statistically-laden analysis of the possible correlation between the blocking experiences of 55 Filipino ESL learners and the levels of easability and readability of the essays they had written. This research employed a descriptive-correlational design using The Questionnaire in Identifying Writer’s Block (QIWB) to gauge the extent of occurrence of writer’s block and the Coh-Metrix Common Core Text Easability and Readability Assessor (hereafter Coh-Metrix T.E.R.A.), an online computational tool, to measure the levels of easability and readability of the essays. The result shows that the learners generally experienced writer’s block, and their essays collectively showed high levels of easability on the basis of narrativity, referential cohesion, and deep cohesion. However, the essays were low in syntactic simplicity and word concreteness, while the level of readability computed exceeded that of the reading ability of 10th-grade learners. Test of correlation revealed that there exists negligible relationship between writer’s block and the overall easability and readability levels of the essays, though a significant but a weak relationship was documented between lateness and word concreteness and with premature editing and deep cohesion, respectively.

СУБСТИТУЦИЯ КАК СРЕДСТВО СВЯЗНОСТИ В ДРАМАТИЧЕСКОМ ТЕКСТЕ

Within the framework of the article research attention is focused on substitution as a frequency means of grammatical cohesion of a dramatic text. The paper emphasizes the problem of the types of substitution that are observed in dialogues of dramatic texts, their role in ensuring the cohesion of such texts. The drama “Pygmalion” by B. Shaw is chosen as the factual material of the study. The dialogues of the drama characters, according to the author’s observations, are characterized by semantic transparency and syntactic simplicity, and therefore the researcher (and the reader) has the opportunity to identify easily substitution models and their text-forming functions.

Evaluating Text Complexity and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

The article presents the results of an exploratory study of the use of T.E.R.A., an automated tool measuring text complexity and readability based on the assessment of five text complexity parameters: narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion and deep cohesion. Aimed at finding ways to utilize T.E.R.A. for selecting texts with specific parameters we selected eight academic texts with similar Flesch-Kincaid Grade levels and contrasted their complexity parameters scores to find how specific parameters correlate with each other. In this article we demonstrate the correlations between text narrativity and word concreteness, abstractness of the studied texts and Flesch – Kincaid Grade Level. We also confirm that cohesion components do not correlate with Flesch –Kincaid Grade Level. The findings indicate that text parameters utilized in T.E.R.A. contribute to better prediction of text characteristics than traditional readability formulas.The correlations between the text complexity parameters values identified are viewed as beneficial for developing a comprehensive approach to selection of academic texts for a specific target audience.

English Textbooks for Russian Students: Problems and Specific Features

The research identifies the complexity level of eight texts from Spotlight 11 used in Russian TEFL to prepare students for National Unified Exam in English and assess their reading skills. The results of the analyses conducted with the help of T.E.R.A., an automated text processor, prove that all texts fell within the range of 6 – 9 Flesch-Kincaid grade levels which correspond to the English language proficiency of the target audience. We also revealed the absence of a clear progression in difficulty across the eight texts in the continuum which may cause unpredictable test results and contribute to de-motivation of students. The results also show that the indices of narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion and deep cohesion measured with T.E.R.A. do not grow but fluctuate across the continuum of the texts either. Aiming at selecting authentic texts with steadily growing complexity of each of the above mentioned parameters, we recommend to incorporate the suggested algorithm of text analysis into TEFL practice in Russia. T.E.R.A. is viewed by the authors as a tool able to provide educators with a solid foundation to select texts, develop curriculum, design assessment tasks and otherwise address academic needs of a target audience.

The Effect of Reducing Lexical and Syntactic Complexity of Texts on Reading Comprehension

The present study investigated the effect of different types of text simplification (i.e., reducing the lexical and syntactic complexity of texts) on reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language learners (EFL). Sixty female intermediate EFL learners from three intact classes in Tabarestan Language Institute in Tehran participated in the study. The intact classes were assigned to three experimental groups. Moreover, to homogenize the groups, the researchers administered a general proficiency test (TOEFL, 2003) to the participants. The results revealed no significant difference among the groups in general proficiency and reading ability. Then four reading comprehension texts from TOEFL test (2005) were simplified through lexical simplification, syntactic simplification or lexical-syntactic simplification techniques. The simplified texts, along with their reading comprehension (RC) questions, formed the three versions of the post-test, each version contained either lexically, syntactically or lexical-syntactically simplified texts. Each group took one version of the post-test. The scores were analyzed through one-way ANOVA. The results revealed a significant difference among the groups. The post hoc test indicated that the lexical-syntactic simplification group significantly outperformed the lexical simplification group and performed considerably better than the syntactic simplification group. There was no significant difference between the lexical and syntactic simplification groups, although the latter showed better results.