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CALICO 2003Determining the Countability of

English Nouns (DeCEN):

A CALL System to Help Students Practice and Develop Reasoning in Determining the

Countability of English Nouns.

Kazumi Slott, M.s. kslott@csusm.eduRika Yoshii, Ph.D.

ryoshii@csusm.edu

California State University, San Marcos

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Research in Multiple Fields

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

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Background

• What we did: – DeCEN is a CALL system available via

the Internet for helping ESL/EFL students master the English countability system.

• Why we did it: – Determining the countability of English

nouns is difficult for many Asian students whose languages have different views about what is countable.

– There are not enough CALL systems for countablity available via the Internet.

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Features of Our Model• Permits discussing the concepts

with the student without relying on English terms that may confuse the ESL student.

• Makes it explicit why the same noun can be both countable and non-countable.

• Uses very few categories.

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Features of Our System• Trains the student to develop reasoning

habits for determining countability.

• Provides individualized help and exercise sequences.

• Written in Java to make it available via the Internet.

• Can be reused as a authoring tool to create other CALL systems by simply editing the input file.

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Outline of the Presentation

• Literature Review• Questionnaires and Interviews• The Model• The System• The Demo• The Authoring System• The Formative Evaluation• Conclusion and Future Tasks

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Literature Review: ESL Books

Thirteen ESL grammar books:

• Label a group of nouns “countable” or “non-countable” based on most frequently used meanings, appearances, qualities [Steer98, EElbaum01, Lites90]

too many categories and too many exceptions.

do not explain why the same noun can be both countable and non-countable.

• Assume that ESL students will view nouns the same way native speakers will. [Beason97]

difficult to interpret terms such as “mass,” “distinct,” “collective,” “specific,” “particular,” and “too small to count.”

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CALL System Review Ten systems:

• “Present a noun by itself” method train students to determine the

countability of a noun without context.

• No proper diagnoses to students’ answers

they cannot learn anything from their mistakes.

• Is this noun countable? should avoid random guesses.

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Questionnaires

• To determine how English and Japanese speakers view countability differently.

• The questionnaire in English and Japanese included twenty-eight words.

• Asked– Is it countable?– Why?

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Questionnaire Results

• Native speakers cannot easily state definite reasons for the countability of English nouns except for material and product nouns.

• Japanese people think every Japanese noun is countable except those nouns referring to some foods (rice, pasta, and noodles).

• Japanese people do not have concepts of what native speakers call “material,” “general,” “category,” and “specific.”

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Follow-Up Interviews

ESL students say • there are too many disorganized

categories.• nouns they learned as non-countable are

sometimes used as countable nouns by native speakers.

ESL teachers tell students• to remember the countability of each

noun individually because the countability of each noun comes from its own history.

• to just remember the categories given in ESL books.

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The Model Observed nouns and their countability in aJapanese-English dictionary and discovered acommonality among non-countable nouns.

Four categories:• Set/member - a set and its members: countable• Material – a material or substance : non-

countable• Concept - encompasses other sets of abstract

things: non-countable• Functionality - denotes a functionality of other

sets of non-abstract things : non-countable

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DeCEN System : Main Features

Based on the Irvine-Geneva strategy [Bork92]• adaptive learning and individualized pacing

through analysis of student answers.• frequent interactions to provide help quickly

and to obtain as much information from the student as possible.

• avoiding simple multiple choice questions so that useful information about student misconceptions can be gathered.

• mastery learning to prevent students from moving onto the next part with incomplete knowledge.

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DeCEN System : Implementation and Execution Environment

• Java 2 SDK 1.4

• Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater• Netscape 7.0• Java plug-in 1.4

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DeCEN System : PedagogyTrack 1: Learn the modelTrack2: Exercises the model with a new nounTrack 3: Exercises the model with known

nouns

• The student can try the same question up to a certain number of times.

• The student can go to the next track only when the number of mistakes is below a certain number. Otherwise, the system has her review the material again.

• Mastery of the system means that the student has passed all the three tracks.

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Demonstration of the System

http://public.csusm.edu/rika/intro.html

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Skeletal Version : Authoring Tool• The only tool allowing Bork-style systems

to be built as a Java applet.

• Specify all information about the system in the input file. No need to change the program.

• The program checks for syntax errors in the input file and gives error messages.

• Available items and tools: message area, picture area, label, rectangle, button, group of check boxes, group of menus, input field, pop-up window, hint, count, repeat, hide, reset, and show.

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Input File Example-************** Declarations of frame and items environments ***************

-== Set up the frame =============================================frame(700, 500, white, yes)

-== Declare items' environments ==================================msg_message(370, 50, 310, 275, white, black, 16+times_roman+plain)

pic_picture(10, 50, 325, 325)

btn_Next(Next >, 350, 470, 90, 25, light_gray, black, 16+times_roman+bold)

-*********************** Specifications of lessons ************************

-== Specify the first screen name =================================first(screen_1)

------------------------- screen 1 --------------------------------<screen_1>msg_message(The circle named "<U>Appliances</>" contains all kinds of appliances.)

pic_picture(appliance1.jpg)

btn_Next(screen_2)

------------------------- screen 2 --------------------------------<screen_2>msg_message(<R>Please make one sentence. ||Please click the Submit button.</>)

pic_picture(test.jpg)

btn_Next(screen_3)

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Formative Evaluation

• 16 students• Used the system for 45 minutes to

2 hours

Evaluation summaries for Track 1, Track2, Track3, overall, and Interface.

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Track 1Explanations of the model 4.5 (5 for very easy)Diagram suggestions 4.5 (5 for remind right away)Exercise questions 3.2 (3 for right difficulty, 5 for too hard)Exercise hints 4.05 (5 for very helpful)

Track2Instructions for exercises 3.67 (5 for very easy)Exercise questions 3.8 (3 for right difficulty, 5 for too hard)Exercise hints 3.08 (5 for very helpful)

Track3Instructions for exercises 3 (3 for right, 5 for too hard)Exercise questions 2.8 (3 for right difficulty, 5 for too hard)Exercise hints 4.3 (5 for very helpful)

OverallUsefulness of the system 7.8 (10 for strongly agree)How useful this system is 4 (5 for very useful)

InterfaceText areas, pop-up windows, buttons, layouts very close to "liked them very much"Text speed improved readability? 3.2 (5 for very much)

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Resulting Changes

• More explanations in the introduction of Track 2.

• Better customized hints for Track 2.

• At the end of Track 1, remind the student a usage of a noun cannot belong to more than one category.

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Future Tasks

• Find out whether DeCEN helps students understand countability better than classroom instructions.

• Have teachers use the authoring tool.• Graphical user interface of the authoring

tool.• Use of database to save students’ records.• Evaluation with more students to decide:

– Better to use less technical terms (e.g. group and individual object) ?

– Split some of the tracks into sub-tracks?

• Fix Bugs.

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ConclusionDeCEN solved a problem for ESL students by:• Introducing the new model, which has only

four simple categories.• Making it clear that the meanings of nouns

in context determine countability.• Giving the diagrams of the categories.• Continuously giving help as hints and

explanations.• Allowing students to proceed at their own

paces and with individualized tracks.• Providing ESL teachers a tool to discuss the

countability system with their students.

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Conclusion (Cont.)

The authoring tool of the DeCEN system help designers by:

• Providing a set of the items and tools needed to develop their own programs without knowledge of computer programming.

• Proving error messages for designers to help them fix errors in their input files.

No other authoring tool can create, as Java applets, tutoring systems that embody the Irvine-Geneva Strategy.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Alastair Milne of the California State University, San Marcos for his role in creating our model, reviewing the system, and in reviewing the presentation.