Text Item Research Articles

Using Natural Language Processing to Predict Item Response Times and Improve Test Construction

AbstractIn this article, it is shown how item text can be represented by (a) 113 features quantifying the text's linguistic characteristics, (b) 16 measures of the extent to which an information‐retrieval‐based automatic question‐answering system finds an item challenging, and (c) through dense word representations (word embeddings). Using a random forests algorithm, these data then are used to train a prediction model for item response times and predicted response times then are used to assemble test forms. Using empirical data from the United States Medical Licensing Examination, we show that timing demands are more consistent across these specially assembled forms than across forms comprising randomly‐selected items. Because an exam's timing conditions affect examinee performance, this result has implications for exam fairness whenever examinees are compared with each other or against a common standard.

Recommendations from cold starts in big data

This paper examines the challenging problem of new user cold starts in subset labelled and extremely sparsely labelled big data. We introduce a new Isle of Wight Supply Chain (IWSC) dataset demonstrating these characteristics. We also introduce a new technique addressing these challenges, the Transitive Semantic Relationships (TSR) model, which infers potential relationships from user and item text content and few labelled examples. We perform both implicit and explicit evaluation of TSR as a recommender system and from new user cold starts we achieve a hit-rate@10 of 77% on a collection of 630 items with only 376 supply-chain consumer labels, and 67% with only 142 supply-chain supplier labels, demonstrating a high level of performance even with extremely few labels in challenging cold-start scenarios. TSR is suitable for any dataset featuring few labels and user and item content, where similarity of content indicates similar relationship forming capability. TSR can be used as a standalone recommender system or to complement existing high-performance recommender models that require more labels or do not support cold starts.

Using Concordance to Decode the Ideological Weight of Lexis in Learning Narrative Literature: A Computational Approach

In learning narrative literature, students find difficulty in comprehending and approaching the ideological messages beyond the usage of recurrent lexical items in literary narrative texts. This problem comes as a result of the huge number of lexical items literary texts, particularly the narrative, abound in. The use of the computer and of computational linguistics work makes it possible to process and examine large data for a variety of purposes and to investigate questions that could not feasibly be answered if the analysis was carried manually. This paper, therefore, investigates the relevance of using concordance to decode the ideological weight of lexis in narrative literature. The main objective of the paper is to explore the extent to which certain ideologies and themes are decoded in literary narrative texts undergone a computational concordance analysis. This is conducted by means of a computational concordancing that is intended for providing two verifiable inputs: Frequency Distribution (FD) and Key Word in Context (KWIC). The paper is grounded on an experimental study, where 39 majoring English students attending one novel course at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, were voluntarily involved in an optional course addressing the study of a narrative literary text: Animal Farm. Participants were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. The former was allowed to use concordance, whereas the latter was only permitted to use conventional methods of studying narrative texts (mere reading). Both groups are assigned to find out the themes and the ideological meanings inferred from a selected list of 13 words from the novel. Results show that the experimental group manages, by applying concordance, to decode the ideological weight of the selected words in a more accurate, credible and faster way than the control group. This in turn facilitates the process of determining the intended message addressed in the novel, either at the character-character level of discourse or at the author-readers one.

Assessing the Impact of Outreach Through Software Citation for Community Software in Geodynamics

The Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics is a community of software users and user-developers who model physical processes in the Earth and planetary interiors. From 2010 to 2018, the community of researchers published upward of 638 peer-reviewed papers in more than 124 venues. We analyzed this corpus of publications to understand the impact of CIG workshops and tutorials, measured through software citation. We automated article analysis using text extraction and tokenization techniques. Patterns in co-mentioned software suggest that usage for some tools cross-cuts many domains, indicating their broad impact. Network analysis of coauthorship and participation in tutorials and hackathons reveal both are effective methods to grow software communities and the importance of developers in bridging research groups and expanding networks. Networks show that workshops broaden the reach of users beyond the developers while hackathons broaden the developer base creating greater collaboration opportunities for hackathon participants.

Investigating Category Translation Shifts of a BBC News Article from English into Arabic

Investigating translation shifts in the translation of news articles has not received much attention despite its paramount importance in how translators produce adequate translations. Indeed, news translation is considered to be understudied in the field of translation. The current research aims at identifying the types of category shifts that have occurred and the most employed ones in the selected corpus.This study offers also an understanding of the category shifts that occur concerning translating news reports or stories. Accordingly, the study will explore the translation of a news article from English into Arabic; the news article titled ‘North Korea ‘preparing rocket launch’, images suggest’ is published on BBC news website 9 March 2019 together with its translation which was found on the BBC Arabic news website. To attain the research objectives, a comparative investigation of the English source text and the Arabic target text will be needed to look into the use of category shifts following Catford’s typology of category shifts. This study adopted a qualitative and quantitative method in identifying what kinds of category shifts occurred and the most frequent ones in the analyzed news text. The findings show that all types of category shifts were employed in the translation with a total of 35 shifts. The most employed type of category shift is structural shifts which are exemplified through 16 cases. These structural shifts are illustrated in word-order, passive-active, or nominal-verbal sentence structures. The least applied category shifts in the process of translation are class shifts which indicate that the translator found target text equivalences that have the same part of speech of the source text items. The study concludes that category shifts were employed in the translation to fill the linguistic gap between the two languages.

SELF ASSESSMENT IN WRITING SKILL OF INTROVERTED STUDENTS

Self assessment is one of parts in assessment process. This process helps the students evaluate their own work and learning process. This study try to implement one of self assessments, namely Type Token Ratio (TTR). It calculates word repetition by deviding the total number of words in a text (tokens) by the number of individual words. This self assessment will be used to only one type of personalities, namely introverted students. The aims of the study are describing the types of token that most used by the introverted students, describing the types of token rarely used by the introverted students, and describing the introverted students opinion about Type Token Ratio (TTR) for their writing. The descriptive qualitative method was implemented in this study. the sources of the data were taken from twenty students of first semester in English Educational Program of UNISDA Lamongan. The findings showed that types of token most used by the introverted students are: nouns appear 466 times, verbs appear 266 times, pronouns appear 266 times and prepositions appear 251 times. Whereas, they rarey used: adverbs appears 171 times, determiners appears 159 times, conjunctions appear 123 times, adjectives appear 94 times and interjections appear 7 times. Based on the result, it can be concluded that the introverted students most often use noun and most rarely use interjection in their writing. Almost all of students think that TTR is good and help them to measure their vocabulary variety.Key words: Self Assessment, Writing Skill, Introverted

SELF ASSESSMENT IN WRITING SKILL OF INTROVERTED STUDENTS

Self assessment is one of parts in assessment process. This process helps the students evaluate their own work and learning process. This study try to implement one of self assessments, namely Type Token Ratio (TTR). It calculates word repetition by deviding the total number of words in a text (tokens) by the number of individual words. This self assessment will be used to only one type of personalities, namely introverted students. The aims of the study are describing the types of token that most used by the introverted students, describing the types of token rarely used by the introverted students, and describing the introverted students opinion about Type Token Ratio (TTR) for their writing. The descriptive qualitative method was implemented in this study. the sources of the data were taken from twenty students of first semester in English Educational Program of UNISDA Lamongan. The findings showed that types of token most used by the introverted students are: nouns appear 466 times, verbs appear 266 times, pronouns appear 266 times and prepositions appear 251 times. Whereas, they rarey used: adverbs appears 171 times, determiners appears 159 times, conjunctions appear 123 times, adjectives appear 94 times and interjections appear 7 times. Based on the result, it can be concluded that the introverted students most often use noun and most rarely use interjection in their writing. Almost all of students think that TTR is good and help them to measure their vocabulary variety. Key words: Self Assessment, Writing Skill, Introverted

A Comparability Study of Text Difficulty and Task Characteristics of Parallel Academic IELTS Reading Tests

As a high-stakes standardized test, IELTS is expected to have comparable forms of test papers so that test takers from different test administration on different dates receive comparable test scores. Therefore, this study examined the text difficulty and task characteristics of four parallel academic IELTS reading tests to reveal to what extent the four tests were comparable in terms of text difficulty, construct coverage, response format, item scope, and task scope. The Coh-Metrix-TEA software was used for the text difficulty analyses and expert judgments were used for task characteristics analyses. The results show that the four reading tests were partly comparable in text difficulty, comparable in terms of construct coverage and item scope, but not comparable in terms of response format and task scope. Based on the findings, implications were discussed on test development and future research.

Mobile learning contribution in improving the understanding of news item text generic structure

Mobile learning is a technological innovation that packs teaching material so it can be accessed any time with interesting material visualization. The use of interactive learning media has a major contribution to changes in the process of delivering information. This study aimed to represent the contribution of mobile learning in improving the understanding of the generic structure of the news item texts. The research method used in this study was the quasi-experimental method with Non-equivalent Control Group design. Questionnaire data collection techniques and tests were used to determine the effectiveness of Mobile Learning in improving the respondents’ skills to understand the generic structure of the news item texts. The increased understanding of the text could be known by analysing and classifying respondents’ understanding of the main events, the context of the event, and the sources of information contained in news item texts. The results of the study showed that the use of mobile learning was effective in conveying information so as to increase the understanding of respondents in understanding the generic structure of the news item texts. In the digitalization era, mobile learning can be used as a medium to convey knowledge and information in both formal and informal ways.

Effect and underlying mechanism of refutation texts on the trust and moral judgment of patients

<p id=C2>Mistrust between doctors and patients is a worldwide concern, especially in China. Among all possible driving factors, the knowledge gap between the two groups plays a key role in the formation of disparate cognitive styles between professional medical workers and laymen. If patients can be educated effectively and prompted to think like experts, they can become more compliant during medical treatment and more tolerant of unexpected diagnosis or treatment results, thus maintaining their trust in doctors. One possible effective way to make patients think like doctors is to conduct knowledge revision in health and medicine, a method that is counterintuitive to ordinary people but familiar to doctors. This process can be facilitated by the adoption of refutation texts, which state previously acquired but incorrect knowledge and then directly refute the wrong information while providing the correct knowledge. In the present set of experiments, we systematically examined the effect and underlying mechanism of refutation texts under medical situations. Refutation texts were constructed in the pilot study. The texts consisted of five items that were familiar to doctors but peculiar and interesting to laymen. After asking 103 college students to guess “True” or “False” on each question, correct answers were provided for the participants. Subsequently, they were asked to assess if these answers prompted them to reflect that their previous beliefs were incorrect. At least 97 participants (94.2%) made one error in the test, and 81 participants (78.6%) admitted that this process prompted a reflection on their previous beliefs, a result that proved the effectiveness of refutation texts. Study 1 was designed to test the effect of refutation texts constructed in the pilot study on patient’s trust and moral judgment on doctors using a 2 (intervention: with or without refutation texts) × 2 (compliance: following doctors’ instruction or not) × 2 (check result: common fever or leukemia) between-subject design. Participants were randomly assigned those eight conditions. First, participants were required to read a scenario of doctor-patient dialogue discussing whether bone marrow puncture (BMP) should be applied to a child. Then, they were required to guess the compliance of the child’s father before they were given the different combinations of the father’s decision and medical results. Participants were required to judge the intention of the doctor’s suggestion of BMP and assess how much trust they have in doctors. Results confirmed the significant effect of refutation texts on the participants’ trust and moral judgment. Participants who were provided refutation texts had higher trust scores and were more likely to judge the doctor’s intention positively and unselfishly compared with those who were not provided such texts. The medical inspection results influenced the participants’ judgment style and trust level. When the inspection showed a minor symptom, participants tended to show lower trust in the doctor and had negative attitude toward the doctor’s suggestion. Study 2 tested the chain mediating role of intolerance of uncertainty and tolerance on medical workers. The same procedure as in Study 1 was used, except that participants’ scores were collected using the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale and Tolerance on Medical Worker’s Questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using Process Plugin. Results showed a chain mediation effect on moral judgment but failed to confirm the same effect on trust. Moreover, Study 3 confirmed the effectiveness of refutation texts under non-medical-related situations and the chain mediating role of intolerance of uncertainty and tolerance on medical workers’ trust. Our findings demonstrated the effectiveness of refutation texts in prompting laymen’s knowledge revision and reflection on their existing health beliefs. This result will improve the tolerance on unexpected treatment consequences and the doctors’ possible misdiagnosis, thus sustaining trust in the doctor. On the basis of our results, we recommend that odd but interesting knowledge of the human body and counter-intuitive medical facts can be employed as routine material in patient education to foster a reflexive attitude on possible unsatisfactory diagnosis or treatment results. Future research may construct more useful refutation text items and further explore the possible hindering effect of previous health beliefs and negative emotions of medical refutation texts.

Combining Text Mining of Long Constructed Responses and Item-Based Measures: A Hybrid Test Design to Screen for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

This article introduces a new hybrid intake procedure developed for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) screening, which combines an automated textual assessment of respondents’ self-narratives and item-based measures that are administered consequently. Text mining technique and item response modeling were used to analyze long constructed response (i.e., self-narratives) and responses to standardized questionnaires (i.e., multiple choices), respectively. The whole procedure is combined in a Bayesian framework where the textual assessment functions as prior information for the estimation of the PTSD latent trait. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to investigate whether the combination model of textual analysis and item-based scaling could enhance the classification accuracy of PTSD, and second, to examine whether the standard error of estimates could be reduced through the use of the narrative as a sort of routing test. With the sample at hand, the combination model resulted in a reduction in the misclassification rate, as well as a decrease of standard error of latent trait estimation. These findings highlight the benefits of combining textual assessment and item-based measures in a psychiatric screening process. We conclude that the hybrid test design is a promising approach to increase test efficiency and is expected to be applicable in a broader scope of educational and psychological measurement in the future.

An Analysis LexIcal Density of Reading text in SMA Imelda Medan

&#x0D; The objectives of the study was to find out the lexical density for lexical items and the dominant kind of lexical items in reading text of the second grade of SMA IMELDA SWASTA MEDAN. This study was conducted by mixed method.This study was done by analysing ten ( 10 ) reading text from the �Bahasa Inggris � textbook. The result of analysis showed that : (1) seven texts (7) were categories medium =50% lexical density. It meant that the text was easy to understand by students and three (3) texts were low =50 % lexical density that means the text was easiest to understand in teaching reading. And there was no high lexical density that found in text, it refers there is no text that include the difficult text for students (2) the dominant kinds of lexical items that found in every text was noun ( 48.0%). It meant noun was more use in every text because noun is easy to include new word. The writer concludes that the textbook are suitable for students. The writer was suggested that the teacher can choose the appropriate teaching reading strategy to improve students� reading comprehension&#x0D; Keywords: : Lexical Density, Lexical Items, Reading Text, Textbook &#x0D; &#x0D;

An Analysis of Students' Reading Ability in Identifying Generic Structure of News Item Text

This research aims to determine the ability of students to identify the generic structure of the news item text. This research uses a descriptive method. Data is taken through examinations in the form of multiple choice questions. The results showed that the ability of students to identify newsworthy events, event backgrounds and sources of news item texts was at a moderate level. This is evidenced by the percentage of student scores for each of the generic structures is 58.46%, 69, 23% and 61, 54%. Therefore, teachers are advised to discuss more and provide training on generic structure of the news item text. Then, students are advised to study harder to understand and do generic structure exercises from news item text. Furthermore, the next researcher is expected to conduct research related to the problems faced by students in identifying the generic structure of the news item text.

An Analysis of Students' Reading Ability in Identifying Generic Structure of News Item Text

An Analysis of Students' Reading Ability in Identifying Generic Structure of News Item Text

Açlık Oyunları üçlemesinde kurgusal kültürel öğelerin çevirisi

In this paper, the main purpose is to examine the&#x0D; fictive culture-specific items (CSIs) in the The Hunger Games trilogy&#x0D; and what kind of translation strategies are used in their Turkish translations.&#x0D; As the concept of culture is essential for translation studies, analysing&#x0D; culture-specific items is accepted to be one the most appropriate methods of&#x0D; observing the translator’s approach to the text. The case study was conducted&#x0D; using Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy and&#x0D; their Turkish translations performed by Sevinç Seyla Tezcan. In line with the&#x0D; dystopian quality of The Hunger Games&#x0D; trilogy, the CSIs were sorted out to include fictive items which were invented&#x0D; by the author to constitute an imaginary world. They were grouped under five&#x0D; categories taken from Eggen’s (2016) work on The Hunger Games with the addition of allusive proper nouns (PNs).&#x0D; The detected items in both texts were compared to determine the strategies used&#x0D; by the translator. As regards to the&#x0D; translation strategies, two separate groups were determined for the analysis of&#x0D; CSIs and PNs. The list of strategies was established by putting together seven&#x0D; strategies offered by Baker and two direct translation procedures offered by Vinay&#x0D; and Darbelnet. During the labelling process, an intercoder reliability calculation&#x0D; was conducted. As the last step, an interview was designed to obtain relevant&#x0D; data in order to make a fair judgment on Tezcan’s approach to the original&#x0D; texts. Ultimately, the translator’s&#x0D; tendency either to domesticate or foreignize the text was revealed on the basis&#x0D; of Venuti’s (2004) theory.

Feasibility of Varied Polyethylene Terephthalate Wastes as a Linker Source in Metal–Organic Framework UiO-66(Zr) Synthesis

Copyright: 2019 American Chemical Society. Due to copyright restrictions, the attached PDF file only contains the abstract of the full text item. For access to the full text item, kindly consult the publisher's website.

Calibrated Parsing Items Evaluation: a step towards objectifying the translation assessment

The present research paper introduces a translation evaluation method called Calibrated Parsing Items Evaluation (CPIE hereafter). This evaluation method maximizes translators’ performance through identifying the parsing items with an optimal p-docimology and d-index (item discrimination). This method checks all the possible parses (annotations) in a source text by means of the Brat Visualization Stanford CoreNLP software. CPIE takes a step towards the objectification of translation assessment by allowing evaluators to assess values (impacts) of the items in source texts via docimologically justified parsing items. For this paper, 16 evaluators were recruited to score translation drafts by means of the holistic, analytic, Preselected Items Evaluation (PIE) methods and CPIE method. For the present research paper, “F-Statistics,” “Probability Plot,” “Spearman rho,” and “Regression Variable Plot” were applied to the evaluators’ translation assessments to ensure the degree of validity and reliability of CPIE compared to the holistic, analytic, and PIE methods, respectively. The results indicated that the CPIE method was more consistent and valid in terms of docimologically justified parsing items. The limitations and the possibilities of the CPIE method in web-based platforms were also discussed.

A Speech-Enabled Fixed-Phrase Translator for Emergency Settings: Crossover Study.

BackgroundIn the context of the current refugee crisis, emergency services often have to deal with patients who have no language in common with the staff. As interpreters are not always available, especially in emergency settings, medical personnel rely on alternative solutions such as machine translation, which raises reliability and data confidentiality issues, or medical fixed-phrase translators, which sometimes lack usability. A collaboration between Geneva University Hospitals and Geneva University led to the development of BabelDr, a new type of speech-enabled fixed-phrase translator. Similar to other fixed-phrase translators (such as Medibabble or UniversalDoctor), it relies on a predefined list of pretranslated sentences, but instead of searching for sentences in this list, doctors can freely ask questions.ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess if a translation tool, such as BabelDr, can be used by doctors to perform diagnostic interviews under emergency conditions and to reach a correct diagnosis. In addition, we aimed to observe how doctors interact with the system using text and speech and to investigate if speech is a useful modality in this context.MethodsWe conducted a crossover study in December 2017 at Geneva University Hospitals with 12 French-speaking doctors (6 doctors working at the outpatient emergency service and 6 general practitioners who also regularly work in this service). They were asked to use the BabelDr tool to diagnose two standardized Arabic-speaking patients (one male and one female). The patients received a priori list of symptoms for the condition they presented with and were instructed to provide a negative or noncommittal answer for all other symptoms during the diagnostic interview. The male patient was standardized for nephritic colic and the female, for cystitis. Doctors used BabelDr as the only means of communication with the patient and were asked to make their diagnosis at the end of the dialogue. The doctors also completed a satisfaction questionnaire.ResultsAll doctors were able to reach the correct diagnosis based on the information collected using BabelDr. They all agreed that the system helped them reach a conclusion, even if one-half felt constrained by the tool and some considered that they could not ask enough questions to reach a diagnosis. Overall, participants used more speech than text, thus confirming that speech is an important functionality in this type of tool. There was a negative association (P=.02) between the percentage of successful speech interactions (spoken sentences sent for translation) and the number of translated text items, showing that the doctors used more text when they had no success with speech.ConclusionsIn emergency settings, when no interpreter is available, speech-enabled fixed-phrase translators can be a good alternative to reliably collect information from the patient.

Fighting modernity with modernity: Agip motels and the making of postwar Italy

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the Italian chain Motel Agip from 1954, when it was created, to 1973, when the oil crisis discouraged car tourism. It combines Bourdieu’s idea that leisure and food provide cultural capital and constructivist theories where leisure contributes to modernity and to shaping people’s identities. The article adopts new archivalist analysis of textual and visual promotional items created or commissioned by ENI and stored in the ENI Historical Archive. Agip motels, in offering relaxation and tranquillity, promised to fight the stress of modern life. At the same time, they perfectly epitomized modernity thanks to their architectural and interior design, in contrast to the subsequent Italian nostalgic approach to leisure and food, which has fought the problems of modern life with old habits and traditions. Thus, among metallic walls, glass doors and new technologies, Agip motels significantly advanced the idea (unusual in Italy) of fighting modernity with modernity.

Muscular Heathenism versus Odor of Chivalry: A Critical Cultural Comparative Analysis of the Illustrated Newspaper Coverage of an 1860 Boxing Match

ABSTRACTAmerican boxer John C. Heenan met English champion Tom Sayers on April 17, 1860, to decide the bare-knuckle boxing champion of the world. The resulting coverage found in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (FLIN)—fifty-six illustrations, thirty-four separate textual items, six covers, and four two-page pictorials—contrasted with material found in Harper’s Weekly (HW), which included just four write-ups and four illustrations (three of which were satirical cartoons). The critical cultural analysis in this article compares the text, illustrations, and the resulting representations found in the fight coverage of FLIN and HW. The analysis revealed how FLIN editor Frank Leslie created the spectacle and the audience he profited from, as well as the detail he employed in the textual and visual representations of his newspaper’s coverage during a time when prize fighting was illegal and genteel cultural gatekeepers were united against the sport.