Towards Literate Artificial Intelligence

Secondary school students are reportedly deficient in English language reading comprehension, and this partly accounts for the poor results recorded in English language at public examinations. Studies indicate that some students really have low interest in reading, just as a number of researchers have queried availability of reading materials for students’ poor achievement in reading comprehension. The argument is that availability and use of appropriate instructional resources will tend to facilitate effective learning in schools. Thus, the study examined students’ interest in reading and availability of reading materials as they relate to and predict students’ achievement in English reading comprehension in Lagelu Local Government Area (LGA) of Oyo State, Nigeria. Survey research design of the correlational type was adopted for the study, which was guided by four research questions. The study population comprised SSS II students in this LGA. Five secondary schools were randomly selected; and a simple random technique was used to select 40 students from each school, thus, a total of 200 participants in the study. Three properly validated instruments – English Reading Comprehension Achievement Test, Students’ Interest in Reading Scale, and Availability and Utilization of English Reading Materials’ Inventory – were used to gather data, which was analyzed using frequency count, percentage, Pearson product moment correlation and multiple regressions. Results show that the current level of students’ achievement in English reading comprehension is generally low. There is no significant relationship between students’ interest in reading and academic achievement (r=0.04, p>0.05). There is a statistically significant and positive relationship between reading materials and students’ achievement (r=0.14, p<0.05). A linear relationship exists among the variables in the study, R=0.14, R 2 =0.02 and Adj. R 2 =0.01. However, availability of reading materials [β=0.14, t(200)=1.93, p<0.05] is a potent and significant predictor of achievement in English reading comprehension. The study concludes that students’ interest in reading and availability of reading materials are significantly related to students’ achievement in English reading comprehension, though only reading materials could substantially predict students’ achievement in reading comprehension. Governments should increase reading materials in schools. There should be adequate and regular supervision of the use of instructional materials in all schools to enhance effective teaching and learning towards boosting students’ achievement. Teachers should always try their best to make use of available instructional materials, or improvise, to make lessons more interesting. Principals should provide teachers with enabling environment for the use of available instructional materials to make learning more meaningful. Article visualizations:

In this paper we gauge the utility of general-purpose, open-domain semantic parsing for textual entailment recognition by combining graph-structured meaning representations with semantic technologies and formal reasoning tools. Our approach achieves high precision, and in two case studies we show that when reasoning over n-best analyses from the parser the performance of our system reaches stateof-the-art for rule-based textual entailment systems. 1 Background and Motivation There is a growing interest in recent years in general-purpose semantic parsing into graphbased meaning representations, which provide greater expressive power than tree-based structures. Recent efforts in this spirit include, for example, Abstract Meaning Representation (Banarescu et al., 2013), and Semantic Dependency Parsing (SDP) (Oepen et al., 2014; Oepen et al., 2015). Simultaneously, in the Semantic Web community, a range of generic semantic technologies for storing and processing graph-structured data has been made available, but these have not been much used for natural language processing tasks. We propose a flexible, generic framework for precision-oriented Textual Entailment (TE) recognition that combines semantic parsing, graph-based representations of sentence meaning, and semantic technologies. During the decade since the TE task was defined, (logical) inference-based approaches have made some important contributions to the field. Systems such as Bos and Markert (2006) and Tatu and Moldovan (2006) employ automated proof search over logical representations of the input sentences. Other systems, such as Bar-Haim et al. (2007), apply transformational rules to linguistic representations of the sentence pairs, and determine entailment through graph subsumption. Because inference-based systems are vulnerable to incomplete knowledge in the rule set and errors in the mapping from natural language sentences to logical forms or linguistics representations, and because the definition of the TE task encourages a more relaxed, non-logical notion of entailment, the majority of TE systems have used more robust approaches, however. Our work supports a notion of logical inference for TE by reasoning with formal rules over graph-structured meaning representations, while achieving results that are comparable with robust approaches. We use a freely available, grammar-driven semantic parser and a well-defined reduction of underspecified logical-form meaning representations into variable-free semantic graphs called Elementary Dependency Structures (EDS) (Oepen and Lonning, 2006). We capitalize on a pre-existing storage and search infrastructure for EDSs using generic semantic technologies. For entailment classification, we create inference rules that enrich the EDS graphs, apply the rules with a generic reasoner, and use graph alignment as a decision tool. To test our generic setup, we perform two case studies where we replicate well-performing TE systems, one from the Parser Evaluation using Textual Entailments (PETE) task (Yuret et al., 2010), and one from SemEval 2014 Task 1 (Marelli et al., 2014). The best published results for the PETE task, Lien (2014), were obtained through heuristic rules that align meaning representations based on structural similarity. Lien and Kouylekov (2014) extend the same basic approach for SemEval 2014 by including lexical relations and negation handling. We recast the handwritten heuristic rules from these systems as formal Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) rules, and run them with a generic reasoning tool over EDS

Reading is one of the most important skills to acquire knowledge in each discipline. In the information explosion times, good English reading ability is indispensable. The purpose of this study is to investigate what learning strategies are adopted by technical college students in English reading comprehension. The author find out the way of obtaining good reading proficiency, and this will provide the teachers and the students with a more effective teaching and studying method. The subjects were four-year technical college students in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages. Statistic analysis methods, such as descriptive statistics, T-test, analysis of variance, and Pearson product-moment correlation analysis were adopted. The author investigates the following problems concerning reading comprehension. (1) Do gender and reading proficiency play an important role in reading strategy use? (2) What strategies do students prefer during the process of learning? (3) What are the effective learning strategies in reading comprehension?

Quite often people think that deaf children acquire language differently from their hearing peers. People often wonder whether deaf children go through the same or different language development milestones from their peers. Some people even wonder whether these children develop any language at all because for them sign language is not a formal language after all. It is also not surprising to find even deaf education scholars hesitant about whether deaf children develop sign language in a pre-determined style at all. This paper is intended to demystify these doubts. The paper explores the nature of sign language acquisition and development by comparing with typical oral language processes. Developmental milestones are provided to allay the tension scholars often go through when required to outline, let alone examine stages of language development in deaf children. The conclusion of this paper is that sign language acquisition and development in deaf children is the same as oral language acquisition and development in their hearing peers. This is because sign and not oral language is the native language for the deaf.

The Language Question in the Learned Estonian Society Kersti Taal University of Tartu Library The purpose of the Learned Estonian Society (LES) established in 1838 became to promote knowledge about the past and future of the Estonian nation, its language and literature and the lands settled by Estonians. Thus, studying and developing the Estonian language was one of the most important tasks of the Society. In this article, the language question is viewed from two perspectives: researching the Estonian language in the 19th century and the transition from German to Estonian in 1928/1929. LES started its activity at a time when even the first Estonian intellectuals, the founding members of the Society, were not yet certain whether Estonian would develop into a cultural language or whether the language of this small nation would fade away. Both the Estonians and German Estophiles thought that the language should be studied at least for the benefit of the future generations. In addition to the lecturers of the Estonian language at the University of Tartu, D. H. Jürgenson and Fr. R. Faehlmann, language studies were conducted by German pastors in the first decades. The most important linguistic undertaking became the compilation of an Estonian-German dictionary. The work progressed slowly and the dictionary was completed by F. J. Wiedemann, a member of LES and an academician at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences as late as in the 1860s. The Ehstnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch was published in 1869 by the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences since LES lacked money for it. In the second half of the 19th century Estonian was studied by the Estonians J. Hurt, M. Veske, and others. Villem Reiman was involved in publishing examples to commemorate the Old Written Language and, thus, LES published Georg Müller’s sermons, Joachim Rossihnius’s catechism and sermons dating back to the 17th century. Although Estonian was not spoken in LES in the 19th century, the Society received letters in Estonian: they were not considered untoward since some of the German members of the society were also fluent in Estonian in addition to the Estonian members. In the 19th century, only a tenth of the Society members were Estonian. When LES recommenced its activity in 1919 in the Republic of Estonia as a German-language organisation, the Germans still held the majority (in 1921 only 36 of the 164 members were Estonian). The first Estonian-language presentation – “The water deity Noova of the Livonians” – was made by Lauri Kettunen, a Finnish professor of the Estonian language on 1 March 1922. In 1928, just before the tenth anniversary of the Republic of Estonia, most of the lectures in the University of Tartu were held in Estonian and the public was increasingly asking the question of how long would the Learned Estonian Society, which was supported by the state, continue to be a German-language organisation? During the 1928 March session, the Society started to discuss the proposal of Henrik Koppel, rector of the University of Tartu, to make Estonian the official language of the Learned Estonian Society. Although the Germans did not agree with the decision, they had to accept the situation, as theirs was a minority opinion. The Germans specifically opposed that the Society’s publications would be in Estonian. The yearbook and transactions remained in German since they were meant for knowledge exchange and introducing Estonian research abroad. The Letters publication series in which works on folk poetry and ethnography were published was started to be issued in Estonian. The Germans reacted to the LES turning into an Estonian-language organisation with withdrawal; Professor Walter Anderson resigned from the position of the Society chairman and no longer edited publications. A new, mainly Estonian board was elected as late as on 4 December 1929, as the Estonians did not hold the majority in the previous year. Julius Mark, professor of linguistics, was elected the chairman. The transition to Estonian was accompanied by great changes in the entire activity of the Society. The new management succeeded in getting more financial support for the Society and its publications developed into more extensive works. Since LES turned into an Estonian-language organisation, it did not meet the fate of many other German-language societies (E(h)stländische Literärische Gesellschaft, Pernauer Alterthumforschende Gesellschaft), which ended their activity in 1939 as the Baltic Germans left.

This study examined several factors that may be involved in the writing of summaries and the impact of these factors on the use of summaries for reading comprehension assessment. Fifty-three seventh-grade subjects of average to above-average reading ability participated in the study. Data collection took place in four sessions over a one-week duration. Levels of prior knowledge and interest in a topic, as well as general writing ability, were assessed before subjects read the target passage. Subjects read a novel passage consisting of a five-page section of a chapter in their regularly-assigned American history text. After reading, subjects wrote, in counterbalanced order, both a free recall and a summary of the passage. After a second reading, subjects answered 15 passage-dependent, multiple-choice questions. In addition, recent scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension were obtained for each subject. Data from the free recalls and summaries were analyzed in three ways. First, a multivariate analysis of variance, with repeated measures on free recalls and summaries, was performed. Next, a standard regression analysis was undertaken, using scores from the prior knowledge, topic interest, and writing ability measures as predictor variables for the free recall and summary scores. Finally, Pearson product-moment correlations coefficients were calculated for both free recalls and summaries with multiple-choice questions scores and scores on the standardized reading comprehension test. MANOVA results revealed a significant main effect for Task, and follow-up univariate tests indicated significant differences between free recalls and summaries for number of idea units and proportion of important idea units included. The regression analysis revealed that prior knowledge, topic interest, and writing ability may play at least a partial role in the writing of summaries. Finally, correlation analyses indicated that summaries measure at least some of the same aspects of reading comprehension as multiple-choice questions and standardized tests. Implications for instruction and direction for further research are cited.

Traditionally, formal languages are defined as sets of words. More recently, the alternative coalgebraic or coinductive representation as infinite tries, i.e., prefix trees branching over the alphabet, has been used to obtain compact and elegant proofs of classic results in language theory. In this article, we study this representation in the Isabelle proof assistant. We define regular operations on infinite tries and prove the axioms of Kleene algebra for those operations. Thereby, we exercise corecursion and coinduction and confirm the coinductive view being profitable in formalizations, as it improves over the set-of-words view with respect to proof automation.

The aim of this study is to investigate the comparison between the use of Directed Reading Activity (DRA) and Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA) methods on students’ reading comprehension. The research design was a quasi-experimental study by comparing two strategies of two experimental groups and one control group pretest - posttest design. It involved 94 participants that consisted of two experimental groups and one control group of the students of State Islamic Senior High School (MAN) Pekanbaru of Riau province. Three research questions and nine hypotheses were posed in this study in order to find out the significant difference between DRA and DR-TA methods on students’ reading comprehension. Pretest and posttest were administered in this study and independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test were used to analyze the data. The research finding showed that there was no significant difference of post-test mean scores between the experimental class 1 using DRA method and the experimental class 2 using DR-TA method on students’ reading comprehension. DRA method contributed the effect of improvement on students’ reading comprehension 76% while DR-TA contributed 72%, and on the other hand the control class contributed 49%. At last, it can make an inference that both DRA and DR-TA methods can be applied in teaching reading comprehension especially at State Islamic Senior High School Pekanbaru of Riau province, and generally in Senior high school level in Indonesia.

This study investigates the role of employing critical reading strategies on the reading comprehension development of high school students. The primary objective is to examine how critical reading strategies affect students' reading comprehension abilities in the classroom. The research utilizes a quantitative approach to assess the influence of critical reading strategies on students' reading comprehension, complemented by a descriptive analysis of the implementation of these strategies and their effects on students' reading progress. A within-subject design was employed, with participants undergoing instructional sessions on both conventional and critical reading strategies. Pre-Test, Treatment 1 involved conventional reading strategies, followed by a Post-Test. A Washout Period was implemented to minimize biases before Treatment 2, which focused on critical reading strategies. The population for this research comprised second-grade students at SMA Negeri 15 Samarinda, with a random sampling technique determining the sample. A standardized reading comprehension test served as the research instrument, and t-tests were utilized for data analysis, specifically concentrating on post-test scores. The findings revealed that critical reading strategies significantly enhanced students' reading comprehension. Specifically, the mean scores increased from 24.83 in the pre-test to 66.67 in the post-test, reflecting a marked improvement in comprehension abilities. The study provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of critical reading strategies in enhancing high school students' reading comprehension skills in the classroom.

This paper shows an educational software for evaluation of Formal Languages subject. Along with a simple interface of easy understanding and application, it is going to present exercises where the student will visualize the automaton on 3D and shall develop the ‘regular expression’ and in a second moment shall develop a minimization of the automaton interacting directly to the 3D object. For the drawing of the automatons, the software uses tools in 3D, how Blender and the VRML and for the edition of the page on the internet along with proposed exercises the programming language PHP is used. After the accomplishment of the proposed exercises the student will send automatically the answers and the final result of the evaluation for his/her e-mail and to the teacher´s e-mail, making thus the evaluation fast and efficient. This software intends to take the subject in referral from the classroom to the informatics labs and will become more appealing to the student, rendering easier the evaluation. Key words: Formal languages, regular expression, 3D, automat, blender, virtual reality modeling language, hypertext prepocessor (PHP)

The objective of this paper is to know how to teach collaborative strategic reading and teaching reading by using CSR. This paper uses descriptive qualitative method by searching any references to accomplish this analysis. The data were collected through observation, teaching learning process and evaluation. This program contains the planning, how to implement the students’ reading comprehension through Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). The post-test was a mean to evaluate the action conducted in this field study. The teacher uses collaborative strategic reading to get the goal of teaching. In general, the results of this field study show that teaching English reading comprehension through collaborative strategic reading has advantages, disadvantages, and impacts: (1) The advantages are improving students’ ability in reading comprehension and increasing students’ English learning motivation, (2) The disadvantages are some group`s members lack contribute to the activity and seriousness is lacking, (3) The impacts are students are working and learning together and also collaborative strategic reading allows students to be more engaged and involved in the learning process, instead of being just passive learners. K eywords: Teaching, Reading, Collaborative Strategic Reading

Mastery of the English grammar is an intricate subject. Conventional teaching and learning of the English grammar have found to be an arduous task for teachers and a lacklustre one for students. The traditional pen and paper method often cause second language (L2) learners to become unmotivated in understanding this important element of the language. Thus, it is critical to provide L2 learners with the motivation to engage learning grammar in a more meaningful and purposive process. An ideal way to provide such learning experiences is through the use of language games that accommodate L2 learners’ desire to grasp grammar rules in an enjoyable way. To fill the gap for a purposive and meaningful grammar-based language game, Worchitect, a card-based game that focuses on (English) parts of speech is developed. The card game poses players/learners with questions that will foster their understanding of the rules of grammar for them to play the game and accumulate the highest scores possible. This game provides a constructive reinforcement to L2 users as it allows for the English parts of speech (and grammar) rules to be deductively attained. Furthermore, Worchitect is highly marketable as it is suitable for learners of various language proficiencies; for language teachers to be used as reinforcement or the actual learning activity; for parents who are looking to spend quality time with their children; and for any language enthusiast.

Recipe formal definition language for operating procedures synthesis

Learning and teaching languages in technology-mediated environments : why modes and meaning making matter

<b>Purpose: </b>The aim of the study was to determine the integrity of fast mapping among adults with developmental language disorder (DLD).<b>Method: </b>Forty-eight adults with DLD or typical language development (TD) were presented with 24 novel words and photos of their unfamiliar referents from the semantic categories of <i>mammal</i>, <i>bird</i>, <i>fruit</i>, or <i>insect</i> in two conditions. In the fast-mapping condition, 12 of the 24 unfamiliar referents were presented, one at a time alongside a familiar referent (e.g., a dog) and a question (e.g., <i>Is the tail of the torato up?</i>). In the explicit-encoding condition, the other 12 unfamiliar referents were presented alone, one at a time, with a label (e.g., <i>This is a spimer</i>). Immediately after exposure (T1) and again after a 1-day interval (T2), memory for the word-to-exemplar link was measured with a three-alternative forced-choice test, requiring the participant to match a spoken word to one of three pictured referents from the training set. At T2, memory for semantic category information was measured with a four-alternative forced-choice test, requiring the participant to match a spoken word to one of four prototypical silhouettes representing each of the semantic categories.Results: Performance on word-to-exemplar link recognition was stronger for words learned in the explicit-encoding than the fast-mapping condition and stronger for the TD group than the DLD group. Time was not a significant factor as both groups maintained posttraining levels of performance after a 1-day retention interval. Performance on semantic category recognition was stronger for words learned in the explicit-encoding than the fast-mapping condition and stronger for the TD group than the DLD group. The lower category recognition performance of the DLD group was related to their lower nonverbal IQ scores.<b>Conclusion: </b>Contexts that allow for explicit encoding yield better learning of word-to-referent links than contexts that allow for fast mapping in both stronger and weaker learners. Adults with DLD have difficulty learning the link between words and referents, whether trained via fast mapping or explicit encoding and whether tested with exemplar or category referents. Retention is a relative strength for adults with DLD.<br><b>Supplemental Material S1.</b> Stimuli grouped by set.<br><b>Supplemental Material S2. </b>Lexical integration.<b><br></b>McGregor, K. K., Eden, N., Arbisi-Kelm, T., &amp; Oleson, J. (2020). The fast-mapping abilities of adults with developmental language disorder. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.</i> Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00418<br>