ymoslem/acl-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Towards a Reliable and Robust Methodology for Crowd-Based Subjective Quality Assessment of Query-Based Extractive Text Summarization (2020)

The intrinsic and extrinsic quality evaluation is an essential part of the summary evaluation methodology usually conducted in a traditional controlled laboratory environment. However, processing large text corpora using these methods reveals expensive from both the organizational and the financial perspective. For the first time, and as a fast, scalable, and cost-effective alternative, we propose micro-task crowdsourcing to evaluate both the intrinsic and extrinsic quality of query-based extractive text summaries. To investigate the appropriateness of crowdsourcing for this task, we conduct intensive comparative crowdsourcing and laboratory experiments, evaluating nine extrinsic and intrinsic quality measures on 5-point MOS scales. Correlating results of crowd and laboratory ratings reveals high applicability of crowdsourcing for the factors overall quality, grammaticality, non-redundancy, referential clarity, focus, structure {\&} coherence, summary usefulness, and summary informativeness. Further, we investigate the effect of the number of repetitions of assessments on the robustness of mean opinion score of crowd ratings, measured against the increase of correlation coefficients between crowd and laboratory. Our results suggest that the optimal number of repetitions in crowdsourcing setups, in which any additional repetitions do no longer cause an adequate increase of overall correlation coefficients, lies between seven and nine for intrinsic and extrinsic quality factors.
A Seed Corpus of Hindu Temples in India (2020)

Temples are an integral part of culture and heritage of India and are centers of religious practice for practicing Hindus. A scientific study of temples can reveal valuable insights into Indian culture and heritage. However to the best of our knowledge, learning resources that aid such a study are either not publicly available or non-existent. In this endeavour we present our initial efforts to create a corpus of Hindu temples in India. In this paper, we present a simple, re-usable platform that creates temple corpus from web text on temples. Curation is improved using classifiers trained on textual data in Wikipedia articles on Hindu temples. The training data is verified by human volunteers. The temple corpus consists of 4933 high accuracy facts about 573 temples. We make the corpus and the platform freely available. We also test the re-usability of the platform by creating a corpus of museums in India. We believe the temple corpus will aid scientific study of temples and the platform will aid in construction of similar corpuses. We believe both these will significantly contribute in promoting research on culture and heritage of a region.
Do You Believe It Happened? Assessing Chinese Readers' Veridicality Judgments (2020)

This work collects and studies Chinese readers' veridicality judgments to news events (whether an event is viewed as happening or not). For instance, in {\textquotedblleft}The FBI alleged in court documents that Zazi had admitted having a handwritten recipe for explosives on his computer{\textquotedblright}, do people believe that Zazi had a handwritten recipe for explosives? The goal is to observe the pragmatic behaviors of linguistic features under context which affects readers in making veridicality judgments. Exploring from the datasets, it is found that features such as event-selecting predicates (ESP), modality markers, adverbs, temporal information, and statistics have an impact on readers' veridicality judgments. We further investigated that modality markers with high certainty do not necessarily trigger readers to have high confidence in believing an event happened. Additionally, the source of information introduced by an ESP presents low effects to veridicality judgments, even when an event is attributed to an authority (e.g. {\textquotedblleft}The FBI{\textquotedblright}). A corpus annotated with Chinese readers' veridicality judgments is released as the Chinese PragBank for further analysis.
Creating Expert Knowledge by Relying on Language Learners: a Generic Approach for Mass-Producing Language Resources by Combining Implicit Crowdsourcing and Language Learning (2020)

We introduce in this paper a generic approach to combine implicit crowdsourcing and language learning in order to mass-produce language resources (LRs) for any language for which a crowd of language learners can be involved. We present the approach by explaining its core paradigm that consists in pairing specific types of LRs with specific exercises, by detailing both its strengths and challenges, and by discussing how much these challenges have been addressed at present. Accordingly, we also report on on-going proof-of-concept efforts aiming at developing the first prototypical implementation of the approach in order to correct and extend an LR called ConceptNet based on the input crowdsourced from language learners. We then present an international network called the European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques (enetCollect) that provides the context to accelerate the implementation of this generic approach. Finally, we exemplify how it can be used in several language learning scenarios to produce a multitude of NLP resources and how it can therefore alleviate the long-standing NLP issue of the lack of LRs.
MAGPIE: A Large Corpus of Potentially Idiomatic Expressions (2020)

Given the limited size of existing idiom corpora, we aim to enable progress in automatic idiom processing and linguistic analysis by creating the largest-to-date corpus of idioms for English. Using a fixed idiom list, automatic pre-extraction, and a strictly controlled crowdsourced annotation procedure, we show that it is feasible to build a high-quality corpus comprising more than 50K instances, an order of a magnitude larger than previous resources. Crucial ingredients of crowdsourcing were the selection of crowdworkers, clear and comprehensive instructions, and an interface that breaks down the task in small, manageable steps. Analysis of the resulting corpus revealed strong effects of genre on idiom distribution, providing new evidence for existing theories on what influences idiom usage. The corpus also contains rich metadata, and is made publicly available.
CRWIZ: A Framework for Crowdsourcing Real-Time Wizard-of-Oz Dialogues (2020)

Large corpora of task-based and open-domain conversational dialogues are hugely valuable in the field of data-driven dialogue systems. Crowdsourcing platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, have been an effective method for collecting such large amounts of data. However, difficulties arise when task-based dialogues require expert domain knowledge or rapid access to domain-relevant information, such as databases for tourism. This will become even more prevalent as dialogue systems become increasingly ambitious, expanding into tasks with high levels of complexity that require collaboration and forward planning, such as in our domain of emergency response. In this paper, we propose CRWIZ: a framework for collecting real-time Wizard of Oz dialogues through crowdsourcing for collaborative, complex tasks. This framework uses semi-guided dialogue to avoid interactions that breach procedures and processes only known to experts, while enabling the capture of a wide variety of interactions.
Effort Estimation in Named Entity Tagging Tasks (2020)

Named Entity Recognition (NER) is an essential component of many Natural Language Processing pipelines. However, building these language dependent models requires large amounts of annotated data. Crowdsourcing emerged as a scalable solution to collect and enrich data in a more time-efficient manner. To manage these annotations at scale, it is important to predict completion timelines and compute fair pricing for workers in advance. To achieve these goals, we need to know how much effort will be taken to complete each task. In this paper, we investigate which variables influence the time spent on a named entity annotation task by a human. Our results are two-fold: first, the understanding of the effort-impacting factors which we divided into cognitive load and input length; and second, the performance of the prediction itself. On the latter, through model adaptation and feature engineering, we attained a Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 25.68 words per minute with a Nearest Neighbors model.
Using Crowdsourced Exercises for Vocabulary Training to Expand ConceptNet (2020)

In this work, we report on a crowdsourcing experiment conducted using the V-TREL vocabulary trainer which is accessed via a Telegram chatbot interface to gather knowledge on word relations suitable for expanding ConceptNet. V-TREL is built on top of a generic architecture implementing the implicit crowdsourding paradigm in order to offer vocabulary training exercises generated from the commonsense knowledge-base ConceptNet and {--} in the background {--} to collect and evaluate the learners' answers to extend ConceptNet with new words. In the experiment about 90 university students learning English at C1 level, based on Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), trained their vocabulary with V-TREL over a period of 16 calendar days. The experiment allowed to gather more than 12,000 answers from learners on different question types. In this paper we present in detail the experimental setup and the outcome of the experiment, which indicates the potential of our approach for both crowdsourcing data as well as fostering vocabulary skills.
Predicting Multidimensional Subjective Ratings of Children' Readings from the Speech Signals for the Automatic Assessment of Fluency (2020)

The objective of this research is to estimate multidimensional subjective ratings of the reading performance of young readers from signal-based objective measures. We here combine linguistic features (number of correct words, repetitions, deletions, insertions uttered per minute . . . ) with phonetic features. Expressivity is particularly difficult to predict since there is no unique golden standard. We here propose a novel framework for performing such an estimation that exploits multiple references performed by adults and demonstrate its efficiency using recordings of 273 pupils.
Constructing Multimodal Language Learner Texts Using LARA: Experiences with Nine Languages (2020)

LARA (Learning and Reading Assistant) is an open source platform whose purpose is to support easy conversion of plain texts into multimodal online versions suitable for use by language learners. This involves semi-automatically tagging the text, adding other annotations and recording audio. The platform is suitable for creating texts in multiple languages via crowdsourcing techniques that can be used for teaching a language via reading and listening. We present results of initial experiments by various collaborators where we measure the time required to produce substantial LARA resources, up to the length of short novels, in Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Icelandic, Irish, Swedish and Turkish. The first results are encouraging. Although there are some startup problems, the conversion task seems manageable for the languages tested so far. The resulting enriched texts are posted online and are freely available in both source and compiled form.
A Dataset for Investigating the Impact of Feedback on Student Revision Outcome (2020)

We present an annotation scheme and a dataset of teacher feedback provided for texts written by non-native speakers of English. The dataset consists of student-written sentences in their original and revised versions with teacher feedback provided for the errors. Feedback appears both in the form of open-ended comments and error category tags. We focus on a specific error type, namely linking adverbial (e.g. however, moreover) errors. The dataset has been annotated for two aspects: (i) revision outcome establishing whether the re-written student sentence was correct and (ii) directness, indicating whether teachers provided explicitly the correction in their feedback. This dataset allows for studies around the characteristics of teacher feedback and how these influence students' revision outcome. We describe the data preparation process and we present initial statistical investigations regarding the effect of different feedback characteristics on revision outcome. These show that open-ended comments and mitigating expressions appear in a higher proportion of successful revisions than unsuccessful ones, while directness and metalinguistic terms have no effect. Given that the use of this type of data is relatively unexplored in natural language processing (NLP) applications, we also report some observations and challenges when working with feedback data.
Creating Corpora for Research in Feedback Comment Generation (2020)

In this paper, we report on datasets that we created for research in feedback comment generation {---} a task of automatically generating feedback comments such as a hint or an explanatory note for writing learning. There has been almost no such corpus open to the public and accordingly there has been a very limited amount of work on this task. In this paper, we first discuss the principle and guidelines for feedback comment annotation. Then, we describe two corpora that we have manually annotated with feedback comments (approximately 50,000 general comments and 6,700 on preposition use). A part of the annotation results is now available on the web, which will facilitate research in feedback comment generation
Using Multilingual Resources to Evaluate CEFRLex for Learner Applications (2020)

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) defines six levels of learner proficiency, and links them to particular communicative abilities. The CEFRLex project aims at compiling lexical resources that link single words and multi-word expressions to particular CEFR levels. The resources are thought to reflect second language learner needs as they are compiled from CEFR-graded textbooks and other learner-directed texts. In this work, we investigate the applicability of CEFRLex resources for building language learning applications. Our main concerns were that vocabulary in language learning materials might be sparse, i.e. that not all vocabulary items that belong to a particular level would also occur in materials for that level, and, on the other hand, that vocabulary items might be used on lower-level materials if required by the topic (e.g. with a simpler paraphrasing or translation). Our results indicate that the English CEFRLex resource is in accordance with external resources that we jointly employ as gold standard. Together with other values obtained from monolingual and parallel corpora, we can indicate which entries need to be adjusted to obtain values that are even more in line with this gold standard. We expect that this finding also holds for the other languages
Immersive Language Exploration with Object Recognition and Augmented Reality (2020)

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) in teaching and learning contexts for language is still young. The ideas are endless, the concrete educational offers available emerge only gradually. Educational opportunities that were unthinkable a few years ago are now feasible. We present a concrete realization: an executable application for mobile devices with which users can explore their environment interactively in different languages. The software recognizes up to 1000 objects in the user`s environment using a deep learning method based on Convolutional Neural Networks and names this objects accordingly. Using Augmented Reality the objects are superimposed with 3D information in different languages. By switching the languages, the user is able to interactively discover his surrounding everyday items in all languages. The application is available as Open Source.
A Process-oriented Dataset of Revisions during Writing (2020)

Revision plays a major role in writing and the analysis of writing processes. Revisions can be analyzed using a product-oriented approach (focusing on a finished product, the text that has been produced) or a process-oriented approach (focusing on the process that the writer followed to generate this product). Although several language resources exist for the product-oriented approach to revisions, there are hardly any resources available yet for an in-depth analysis of the process of revisions. Therefore, we provide an extensive dataset on revisions made during writing (accessible via \url{https://hdl.handle.net/10411/VBDYGX}). This dataset is based on keystroke data and eye tracking data of 65 students from a variety of backgrounds (undergraduate and graduate English as a first language and English as a second language students) and a variety of tasks (argumentative text and academic abstract). In total, 7,120 revisions were identified in the dataset. For each revision, 18 features have been manually annotated and 31 features have been automatically extracted. As a case study, we show two potential use cases of the dataset. In addition, future uses of the dataset are described.
Automated Writing Support Using Deep Linguistic Parsers (2020)

This paper introduces a new web system that integrates English Grammatical Error Detection (GED) and course-specific stylistic guidelines to automatically review and provide feedback on student assignments. The system is being developed as a pedagogical tool for English Scientific Writing. It uses both general NLP methods and high precision parsers to check student assignments before they are submitted for grading. Instead of generalized error detection, our system aims to identify, with high precision, specific classes of problems that are known to be common among engineering students. Rather than correct the errors, our system generates constructive feedback to help students identify and correct them on their own. A preliminary evaluation of the system`s in-class performance has shown measurable improvements in the quality of student assignments.
TLT-school: a Corpus of Non Native Children Speech (2020)

This paper describes {\textquotedblleft}TLT-school{\textquotedblright} a corpus of speech utterances collected in schools of northern Italy for assessing the performance of students learning both English and German. The corpus was recorded in the years 2017 and 2018 from students aged between nine and sixteen years, attending primary, middle and high school. All utterances have been scored, in terms of some predefined proficiency indicators, by human experts. In addition, most of utterances recorded in 2017 have been manually transcribed carefully. Guidelines and procedures used for manual transcriptions of utterances will be described in detail, as well as results achieved by means of an automatic speech recognition system developed by us. Part of the corpus is going to be freely distributed to scientific community particularly interested both in non-native speech recognition and automatic assessment of second language proficiency.
Toward a Paradigm Shift in Collection of Learner Corpora (2020)

We present the first version of the longitudinal Revita Learner Corpus (ReLCo), for Russian. In contrast to traditional learner corpora, ReLCo is collected and annotated fully automatically, while students perform exercises using the Revita language-learning platform. The corpus currently contains 8 422 sentences exhibiting several types of errors{---}grammatical, lexical, orthographic, etc.{---}which were committed by learners during practice and were automatically annotated by Revita. The corpus provides valuable information about patterns of learner errors and can be used as a language resource for a number of research tasks, while its creation is much cheaper and faster than for traditional learner corpora. A crucial advantage of ReLCo that it grows continually while learners practice with Revita, which opens the possibility of creating an unlimited learner resource with longitudinal data collected over time. We make the pilot version of the Russian ReLCo publicly available.
Quality Focused Approach to a Learner Corpus Development (2020)

The paper presents quality focused approach to a learner corpus development. The methodology was developed with multiple design considerations put in place to make the annotation process easier and at the same time reduce the amount of mistakes that could be introduced due to inconsistent text correction or carelessness. The approach suggested in this paper consists of multiple parts: comparison of digitized texts by several annotators, text correction, automated morphological analysis, and manual review of annotations. The described approach is used to create Latvian Language Learner corpus (LaVA) which is part of a currently ongoing project Development of Learner corpus of Latvian: methods, tools and applications.
An Exploratory Study into Automated Pr\'ecis Grading (2020)

Automated writing evaluation is a popular research field, but the main focus has been on evaluating argumentative essays. In this paper, we consider a different genre, namely pr{\'e}cis texts. A pr{\'e}cis is a written text that provides a coherent summary of main points of a spoken or written text. We present a corpus of English pr{\'e}cis texts which all received a grade assigned by a highly-experienced English language teacher and were subsequently annotated following an exhaustive error typology. With this corpus we trained a machine learning model which relies on a number of linguistic, automatic summarization and AWE features. Our results reveal that this model is able to predict the grade of pr{\'e}cis texts with only a moderate error margin.
Adjusting Image Attributes of Localized Regions with Low-level Dialogue (2020)

Natural Language Image Editing (NLIE) aims to use natural language instructions to edit images. Since novices are inexperienced with image editing techniques, their instructions are often ambiguous and contain high-level abstractions which require complex editing steps. Motivated by this inexperience aspect, we aim to smooth the learning curve by teaching the novices to edit images using low-level command terminologies. Towards this end, we develop a task-oriented dialogue system to investigate low-level instructions for NLIE. Our system grounds language on the level of edit operations, and suggests options for users to choose from. Though compelled to express in low-level terms, user evaluation shows that 25{\%} of users found our system easy-to-use, resonating with our motivation. Analysis shows that users generally adapt to utilizing the proposed low-level language interface. We also identified object segmentation as the key factor to user satisfaction. Our work demonstrates advantages of low-level, direct language-action mapping approach that can be applied to other problem domains beyond image editing such as audio editing or industrial design.