Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Instructional Systems Technology, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-02, Section: A, page: 0522. Adviser: Michael Molenda. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 18, 2006)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Education Policy Studies, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 5, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2823. Adviser: Bradley A. U. Levinson.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-170). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss &rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR11900

This project is a proof-of-concept. It aims to demonstrate the feasibility of an approach to Computer-Assisted Assessment of free-text material in the domain of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). The underlying theory places the project within given pedagogic constraints, just as a Language Tutoring System should. The constraints call for the project to be addressed to the intermediate-advanced student of French-as-a-Second-Language, and be oriented toward the autonomous enhancement of text comprehension skills, following a previous project in CALL at the University of Ottawa, DidaLect. This type of learning activity requires a student to answer questions related to informative texts. The goal of this work has been to build a framework to assess the correctness of the student's sentence' s grammar on the one hand, and on the other hand to ensure that the answer's content matches the reference. In order to achieve this, the research has gone in two different directions. First, we used Natural-Language-Processing (NLP) to find means of language error detection and correction (form), as well as means for semantic comparison (content). Content comparison amounts to performing deep analysis of the student's answer in order to guarantee that no material in the student's answer is irrelevant to the actual answer. We used a symbolic approach to the problem, because statistical methods can only provide approximations of content similarity, which is dangerous in a CALL context because the student can be error-prone. The fact that this work is the first of its kind, at least in what concerns Text Comprehension and French-as-a-Second-Language, has been another reason to opt for symbolic processing: in the absence of any comparable system, a symbolic approach might constitute a better baseline, to be challenged in the future by statistical methods. Finally, error detection is syntax-based in language technologies. As well, a symbolic approach permits to use the same structure for the assessment of form and content. Second, we worked in the direction of didactics to frame the work within relevant theoretical grounds in terms of the relation from questions to text, especially in order to limit the impact of the knowledge gap between machine and humans (students) -- a general consequence of the work-in-progress state of semantic analysis in NLP. The questions are controlled through a formal categorization that restricts the scope of the questions to answering material actually present in the text -- no world-knowledge is a priori needed. The system has been tested on a set of 273 student's answers gathered in class. The evaluation gave a result of 62% of answers correctly assessed as correct or incorrect. Due to the conservativeness of the system, precision on the assessment of correct answers is 100%, which satisfies the requirements of Second-Language Learning and CALL. The implemented program is a contribution in itself because no comparable system exists, while there is a real demand from the world of CALL for such a tool. The project also makes a contribution to NLP through a new approach to paraphrase recognition. This uses previous work in computational linguistics (the Meaning-Text Theory) to provide a rule-based model of syntactic paraphrase which, although limited to syntax, actually constitutes the only generic model of paraphrase to our knowledge, and should be easily adapted to other languages.

James Berlin, Stephen North, and other leading historians of composition have implied that nothing very interesting happened in composition classrooms before 1960. To counter that assumption, I offer my description of English 1-2 at Amherst College, an innovative and challenging freshman writing course directed by Theodore Baird from 1938-1968. Although no one published much about this course while it was a going concern, several members of its staff, including Walker Gibson and William E. Coles, Jr., later wrote about similar courses they designed elsewhere. My observations about English 1-2 are based on interviews with its faculty and graduates and on a study of materials now held in the Amherst College Archives. English 1-2 was taught collaboratively by a staff of eight or ten men who devised a new and demanding sequence of 33 assignments each semester, calling on students to write from experience. The instructors, who otherwise used no text, mimeographed their students' papers and made these the focus of classroom discussions. The instructors invited students to explore the relation between language and reality and to view themselves as makers of meaning. Paradoxically, English 1-2 seems both to have generated a potentially disempowering mystique and to have enabled many students to claim new measures of authority over language.

This dissertation describes in-depth, using participant's words, experiences of undergraduate college writers. The study was undertaken in an attempt to understand from a student perspective what it is like to write in one's major course of study and throughout the university curriculum. There were seven students, representing different academic majors at a large university. Each were interviewed in a series of three open-ended interviews totaling four and one-half hours. Key questions followed Seidman's (1987) protocol for phenomenological in-depth interviewing: What was writing like for you before college? What is writing like for you now? And, What does your writing mean to you? Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, Three participant's transcripts were edited into profiles of the individual writers while other interviews were used to illumine themes common to all the participants. Insights from this study suggest students are "practitioners" and possess a certain "practitioner-expertise" in being student writers. This practitioner knowledge reveals student experiences are more complex than indicated by previous research. Among these complexities are students' interactions with their instructors, and their own procrastination, which produce tension about writing. Forms of this tension are explored in the histories and current experiences of different students. These experiences indicated that when student writing is perceived as a "task" which must be completed simply to comply with a course requirement, there is a tendency to approach writing in a formulaic way, with little attention paid to the writing processes. On the other hand, the participants expressed that writing is a positive experience at times when they are consciously aware it has contributed to their learning in a subject-area or when it has aided them in their personal growth. The study indicates writing in college is often shaped by the bureaucratic enterprise of grading and sorting students. Recommendations include making teacher-student interactions consultative and personable, teachers and administrators stronger advocates for smaller class size, and giving students choices of instructional approaches to writing so individual needs as writers are being met in composition courses and across the curriculum.

Thesis (M.A. (Linguistics))--Rhodes University, 2004. / Thesis submitted in partial fufilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 72-76).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.