Machine reading is the artificial-intelligence task of automatically reading a corpus of texts and, from the contents, building a knowledge base that supports automated reasoning and question answering. Success at this task could fundamentally solve the knowledge acquisition bottleneck – the widely recognized problem that knowledge-based AI systems are difficult and expensive to build because of the difficulty of acquiring knowledge from authoritative sources and building useful knowledge bases. One challenge inherent in machine reading is knowledge integration – the task of correctly and coherently combining knowledge snippets extracted from texts. This dissertation shows that knowledge integration can be automated and that it can significantly improve the performance of machine reading. We specifically focus on two contributions of knowledge integration. The first contribution is for improving the coherence of learned knowledge bases to better support automated reasoning and question answering. Knowledge integration achieves this benefit by aligning knowledge snippets that contain overlapping content. The alignment is difficult because the snippets can use significantly different surface forms. In one common type of variation, two snippets might contain overlapping content that is expressed at different levels of granularity or detail. Our matcher can “see past” this difference to align knowledge snippets drawn from a single document, from multiple documents, or from a document and a background knowledge base. The second contribution is for improving text interpretation. Our approach is to delay ambiguity resolution to enable a machine-reading system to maintain multiple candidate interpretations. This is useful because typically, as the system reads through texts, evidence accumulates to help the knowledge integration system resolve ambiguities correctly. To avoid a combinatorial explosion in the number of candidate interpretations, we propose the packed representation to compactly encode all the candidates. Also, we present an algorithm that prunes interpretations from the packed representation as evidence accumulates. We evaluate our work by building and testing two prototype machine reading systems and measuring the quality of the knowledge bases they construct. The evaluation shows that our knowledge integration algorithms improve the cohesiveness of the knowledge bases, indicating their improved ability to support automated reasoning and question answering. The evaluation also shows that our approach to postponing ambiguity resolution improves the system’s accuracy at text interpretation. / text

The aim of the present study was to examine students' text comprehension in grades 4 and 6. Participants were 61 students without documented or suspected reading and writing difficulties, in grades 4 and 6. The focus was on texts designed by Bishop and Adams (1992), containing two types of questions: literal and inference questions, and three different ways of presenting the text; listening, silent reading and silent reading with the text available when responding to the questions. The texts have been previously used in research and as a tool for clinical, qualitative estimate of reading comprehension in speech and language pathologists’ assessments. Investigation was also conducted for working memory, vocabulary, and phonological and orthographical decoding. The results show that students have a significantly higher score in terms of literal questions when the text is available in responding to the questions, versus listening and silent reading. The results also show that literal and inference questions do not differ. No differences between gender and grades were encountered. Conclusions are drawn that students with typical reading development in grades 4 and 6 do not have any difficulty in answering neither literal nor inference questions, concerning the three texts in this study.

Summarization models which operate on meaning representations of documents have been neglected in the past, although they are a very promising and interesting class of methods for summarization and text understanding. In this thesis, I present one such summarizer, which uses the proposition as its meaning representation. My summarizer is an implementation of Kintsch and van Dijk's model of comprehension, which uses a tree of propositions to represent the working memory. The input document is processed incrementally in iterations. In each iteration, new propositions are connected to the tree under the principle of local coherence, and then a forgetting mechanism is applied so that only a few important propositions are retained in the tree for the next iteration. A summary can be generated using the propositions which are frequently retained. Originally, this model was only played through by hand by its inventors using human-created propositions. In this work, I turned it into a fully automatic model using current NLP technologies. First, I create propositions by obtaining and then transforming a syntactic parse. Second, I have devised algorithms to numerically evaluate alternative ways of adding a new proposition, as well as to predict necessary changes in the tree. Third, I compared different methods of modelling local coherence, including coreference resolution, distributional similarity, and lexical chains. In the first group of experiments, my summarizer realizes summary propositions by sentence extraction. These experiments show that my summarizer outperforms several state-of-the-art summarizers. The second group of experiments concerns abstractive generation from propositions, which is a collaborative project. I have investigated the option of compressing extracted sentences, but generation from propositions has been shown to provide better information packaging.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-01-26T18:49:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao.pdf: 5487690 bytes, checksum: ca631570b42cef59a220edd80e6c8e83 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-11-27 / This dissertation resulted from a research carried out in the Master in Education Program, line of research 2 The Professor s Background and Pedagogical Practice, of Universidade do Oeste Paulista. It was carried out to investigate the need and pertinence of a reading work done as a learning mediation element in a college course. One tried to learn about reading habits and literary preferences to analyze the students difficulties concerning reading and text writing, besides considering the importance of providing a course of reading and text writing to academic public. The research is characterized as a quantitative-qualitative one, comprising 35 students attending a Dentistry course at a private Higher Education Institution in São Paulo State, in a reading and text interpretation course, developed along 18 sessions, comprising two hours each of them. One made use of questionnaires, participation of students during such sessions and documents provided by the undergraduate office of the institution showing the students academic achievement before and after the course at issue. As far as its results are concerned, even recognizing the limitations of the research, it was possible to conclude that a course which has reading as a mediator of knowledge acquisition is necessary and pertinent to help students acquire cognitive habits favoring the exploration of written texts. Gaps related to previous knowledge show that working with reading even at college level should not be considered as inherent to specific disciplines, but should interact with them within a cooperation context, in which reading is viewed as important due to the mediation of knowledge, and has implications for the students improvement in various disciplines which compose the curriculum subjects of the course at issue. Concluding, its results show that the students who do reading and text interpretation tend to reach a higher level of achievement in learning the disciplines of the course. / Esta dissertação é resultado de uma pesquisa desenvolvida no Programa de Mestrado em Educação, linha de pesquisa 2 Formação e Prática Pedagógica do Profissional Docente, da Universidade do Oeste Paulista. Este estudo teve como objetivo investigar a necessidade e a pertinência de um trabalho de leitura como elemento de mediação de aprendizagem num curso universitário. Procurou-se conhecer hábitos de leitura e suas preferências literárias, bem como analisar dificuldades dos alunos em relação à leitura e à produção de texto, além de avaliar a importância de se oferecer a acadêmicos um curso de leitura e produção de texto. A pesquisa caracterizou-se como quanti-qualitativa, envolvendo 35 alunos do curso de Odontologia de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior privada, do interior do Estado de São Paulo, em um curso de leitura e interpretação de textos, desenvolvido ao longo de 18 sessões, com duas horas de duração cada. Para a análise dos dados, recorreu-se a questionários, registros das participações dos alunos durante as sessões e documentos fornecidos pela secretaria da instituição sobre o desempenho dos acadêmicos antes e depois do curso. Em relação aos resultados, mesmo reconhecendo as limitações da pesquisa, foi possível chegar a indicações de que um curso que tenha a leitura como mediadora do conhecimento é necessário e pertinente para auxiliar os alunos na formação de hábitos cognitivos abertos a explorações de textos escritos. Lacunas relativas a conhecimentos prévios apontaram que o trabalho com a leitura, mesmo na universidade, não deve ser tratado como inerente às disciplinas específicas, mas em interação com elas, em um contexto de cooperação, com a leitura sendo percebida como importante na mediação do conhecimento, implicando em melhoria dos acadêmicos nas diferentes disciplinas que compõem a grade curricular do curso universitário. Concluindo, os resultados apontaram que estudantes que praticam a leitura e a interpretação de texto tendem a apresentar rendimentos superiores na aprendizagem das disciplinas do curso.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-18T17:54:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao.pdf: 5487690 bytes, checksum: ca631570b42cef59a220edd80e6c8e83 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-11-27 / This dissertation resulted from a research carried out in the Master in Education Program, line of research 2 The Professor s Background and Pedagogical Practice, of Universidade do Oeste Paulista. It was carried out to investigate the need and pertinence of a reading work done as a learning mediation element in a college course. One tried to learn about reading habits and literary preferences to analyze the students difficulties concerning reading and text writing, besides considering the importance of providing a course of reading and text writing to academic public. The research is characterized as a quantitative-qualitative one, comprising 35 students attending a Dentistry course at a private Higher Education Institution in São Paulo State, in a reading and text interpretation course, developed along 18 sessions, comprising two hours each of them. One made use of questionnaires, participation of students during such sessions and documents provided by the undergraduate office of the institution showing the students academic achievement before and after the course at issue. As far as its results are concerned, even recognizing the limitations of the research, it was possible to conclude that a course which has reading as a mediator of knowledge acquisition is necessary and pertinent to help students acquire cognitive habits favoring the exploration of written texts. Gaps related to previous knowledge show that working with reading even at college level should not be considered as inherent to specific disciplines, but should interact with them within a cooperation context, in which reading is viewed as important due to the mediation of knowledge, and has implications for the students improvement in various disciplines which compose the curriculum subjects of the course at issue. Concluding, its results show that the students who do reading and text interpretation tend to reach a higher level of achievement in learning the disciplines of the course. / Esta dissertação é resultado de uma pesquisa desenvolvida no Programa de Mestrado em Educação, linha de pesquisa 2 Formação e Prática Pedagógica do Profissional Docente, da Universidade do Oeste Paulista. Este estudo teve como objetivo investigar a necessidade e a pertinência de um trabalho de leitura como elemento de mediação de aprendizagem num curso universitário. Procurou-se conhecer hábitos de leitura e suas preferências literárias, bem como analisar dificuldades dos alunos em relação à leitura e à produção de texto, além de avaliar a importância de se oferecer a acadêmicos um curso de leitura e produção de texto. A pesquisa caracterizou-se como quanti-qualitativa, envolvendo 35 alunos do curso de Odontologia de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior privada, do interior do Estado de São Paulo, em um curso de leitura e interpretação de textos, desenvolvido ao longo de 18 sessões, com duas horas de duração cada. Para a análise dos dados, recorreu-se a questionários, registros das participações dos alunos durante as sessões e documentos fornecidos pela secretaria da instituição sobre o desempenho dos acadêmicos antes e depois do curso. Em relação aos resultados, mesmo reconhecendo as limitações da pesquisa, foi possível chegar a indicações de que um curso que tenha a leitura como mediadora do conhecimento é necessário e pertinente para auxiliar os alunos na formação de hábitos cognitivos abertos a explorações de textos escritos. Lacunas relativas a conhecimentos prévios apontaram que o trabalho com a leitura, mesmo na universidade, não deve ser tratado como inerente às disciplinas específicas, mas em interação com elas, em um contexto de cooperação, com a leitura sendo percebida como importante na mediação do conhecimento, implicando em melhoria dos acadêmicos nas diferentes disciplinas que compõem a grade curricular do curso universitário. Concluindo, os resultados apontaram que estudantes que praticam a leitura e a interpretação de texto tendem a apresentar rendimentos superiores na aprendizagem das disciplinas do curso.

<p>K&uuml;l&ouml;nb&ouml;ző t&iacute;pus&uacute; sz&ouml;vegek kreat&iacute;v olvas&aacute;s&aacute;nak fejleszt&eacute;se az anyanyelv tan&iacute;t&aacute;s&aacute;ban (Razvijanje sposobnosti kreativnog čitanja različitih tipova tekstova u nastavi maternjeg jezika) tretira metode i procese kojima se razvija čitanje sa razumevanjem (čitalačka pismenost). Ukazuje na to da su preduslov za razumevanje teksta razvijena tehnika čitanja, leksički fond, razumevanje sintagme i rečenice, izvođenje zaključaka, razuđenost teksta, prepoznavanje strukture teksta, unutra&scaron;nja slika (mentalna mapa) tipa teksta, u pisanom tekstu poznavanje vizuelnog upravljanja (forma teksta) i jezičkog upravljanja, retorike, uvažavanje vizuelnog konteksta (slike i ilustracije, tumačenje uzajamno komplementarnih tekstova i slika), prepoznavanje stila (stilskog registra), veći kapacitet radne memorije, monitoring okvirnog znanja (poznavanje sveta), procesa razumevanja itd. U radu se prikazuju oblici ispoljavanja deficita pri razumevanju teksta, a obja&scaron;njavaju se i uzroci.<br />Autorka analizira strategije razvijanja čitalačke pismenosti sa razumevanjem različitih tipova tekstova počev od beletristike (bajki i poezije), preko naučno-popularne literature (udžbenika) do adekvatnog tumačenja multimedijalnih, pa i digitalnih tekstova. Usput spominje kreativno-produktivne vežbe, ilustruje njihovu ulogu, značaj u stvaranju značenja, prikazuje mehanizam za postizanje efekata kod vežbi kreativnog pisanja i bavi se metodikom vaspitavanja čitalaca.<br />U doktorskoj disertaciji, nakon razmatranja teoretsko-metodolo&scaron;ke osnove čitanja sa razumevanjem različitih tipova tekstova, sledi prezentacija rezultata empirijskog istraživanja, kvantitativna i kvalitativna analiza sa matematičko-statističkom obradom podataka. U istraživanju je kori&scaron;ćen test za razumevanje teksta koji nije formalan (standardni), odnosno upitnik o čitalačkim navikama. Uzorak obuhvata 800 učenika: iz naselja u kojima Mađari žive u homogenim sredinama, u rasejanju, odnosno u izolovanim manjim zajednicama.<br />Tokom istraživanja autorka je ispitivala u kojoj meri jezička sredina učenika (Mađari u homogenim naseljima, u rasejanju ili izolovanim zajednicama) utiče na nivo razvoja njihove sposobnosti razumevanja teksta, kao i da li postoji statistički značajna povezanost (pozitivna korelacija) između socijalno-kulturne sredine učenika i nivoa razvoja njihove sposobnosti razumevanja teksta. Istraživanje obuhvata i aspekat postojanja statistički značajne razlike među polovima &scaron;to se tiče sposobnosti kreativnog čitanja i da li ima razlike u procentima re&scaron;enih zadataka vezanih za razne tipove tekstova, odnosno u kojoj meri učinak u razumevanju teksta zavisi od tipa teksta. Tokom kvalitativne analize dobija se odgovor i na to, kako su mediji promenili tradicionalnu strukturu kori&scaron;ćenja slobodnog vremena, odnosno kako se menja profil čitanja po žanrovima i struktura traženog &scaron;tiva.<br />Koristeći metode deskriptivne, istorijske, statističke i teorijske analize doktorska disertacija daje uvid u nivo razvoja učenika 4. razreda osnovne &scaron;kole ‒ na teritorijama gde Mađari žive homogeno, u rasejanju ili u izolovanim zajednicama ‒ &scaron;to se tiče sposobnosti razumevanja teksta, odnosno čitalačkih navika. Disertacija može poslužiti kao osnova za dalja istraživanja, dajući podlogu za komparativne analize.</p> / <p>The doctoral dissertation entitled K&uuml;l&ouml;nb&ouml;ző t&iacute;pus&uacute; sz&ouml;vegek kreat&iacute;v olvas&aacute;s&aacute;nak fejleszt&eacute;se az anyanyelv tan&iacute;t&aacute;s&aacute;ban (English translation: The development of creative reading of texts with a different type in native language teaching) examines the methods, procedures enhancing text comprehending reading. It sheds light on the fact that the condition of text comprehending is the developed reading technique, the vocabulary, syntagm- and sentence understanding, drawing the conclusions, the articulateness of the text, the recognition of text structure, the inner picture of the text type (its mental map), the visual control (the text form) and the lingual control in the written text, the knowledge of the rhetoric, taking into consideration (the interpretation of a text and figure being complementary with each other) the visual context (figures and illustrations), identification of the style (the style register), bigger work memory capacity, the knowledge framework (world knowledge), monitoring the understanding process, etc. Furthermore, it presents the forms of manifestation of the text comprehending deficits, and brings the reasons to light.<br />By analysing the development strategies of comprehending reading of texts with a different type, the author starts from the literary texts (from the tale and the poem), through the educational (course book) texts gets to the adequate interpretation of the multimedia and digital texts. Meanwhile flashes the creative-productive practices by illustrating their role, significance in meaning creation, presents the mode of action of the creative writing practices, and touches upon the methodology of educating for reading.<br />In the doctoral dissertation, the theoretical-methodological establishment of the comprehending reading of different type of texts is followed by the presentation of the results of the empirical research, respectively the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the statistical data. The research was not carried out with the examination of a random sample, it is not a formal (not standard) text comprehending test, and it is based on the questionnaire surveying the reading habits. 800 students belong to the sample: the students living on areas predominantly inhabited by ethnic Hungarian population (compact areas), students living in a diaspora environment, and students from scattered areas.<br />In the course of her research the author examines whether the students&#39; lingual environment (living on areas predominantly inhabited by ethnic Hungarian population, in a diaspora environment, and on scattered areas) influences the development level of text comprehending ability, furthermore whether statistically there exists considerable connection (positive correlation) between the students&#39; sociocultural background and the development level of text comprehending ability. The research also extends to whether, as regard the genders, there can be observed statistically considerable difference regarding the level of creative reading ability, and whether the resolution proportions of the tasks being attached to different type of texts show a difference, namely to what extend does text comprehending performance depend on the text type. In the course of the qualitative analysis we have also got an answer of how did the media modify the traditional structure of free time spending, and how did the aspect of reading change regarding the read genres, the reading structure.<br />By the descriptive, historical, statistical and theoretical analysis, the doctoral dissertation draws a picture ‒ on the areas predominantly inhabited by ethnic Hungarian population (compact areas), the diaspora environment, and on scattered areas ‒ with regard to the primary school fourth grade students, on the development level of text comprehending ability, and maps the reading habits as well. The dissertation may serve as the basis of additional researches, providing the basis for comparative analyses.</p>

This ethnographic study is located in the field of literary didactics, covering an intersection of the subjects of Swedish and theatre. It investigates construction of text understanding while its participants work with staging Molière’s The affected ladies (Les précieuses ridicules, 1659). Studies of classroom interaction connected to reading drama text are rare in the Swedish field of literary didactics. The main research interest is the participants’ use of interwoven semiotic resources, including spoken language, body, voice and various artifacts. Based on a general need to understand how Swedish students develop reading skills (related to decreasing results internationally) and a growing research interest in the field for embodied knowledge connected to literacy competencies the study sets out to answer the following questions: How do the participants construct text understanding using semiotic resources with a focus on: a) matching of repertoires b) in-role re-presentation c) negotiations. The first aspect draws on theories used in literary didactics including McCormick’s (1994) literary and general repertoires and Langer’s (1995) envisioning literature. The second aspect draws on aesthetic learning and embodied knowledge  (Molander, 1996; Saar, 2005) and theatre semiotics (Heed, 2002). The third aspect draws on sociocultural theory (Vygotskij, 1978; Säljö, 2014) and sociocultural theory applied in the field of drama and theatre (Davis, Clemson &amp; Ferholt, 2015). Seven upper secondary school students, a teacher of Swedish and a teacher of theatre were observed over a period of seven months, starting with the students’ first encounter with the drama text, lasting to the final performance of a one-hour theatre production. The researcher occasionally became participant in the creative process. Analyzed data include field notes, video and sound recordings. Major findings are that: a) Students continuously match their own repertoires with the repertoires of the drama text by references to popular culture, language and body expressions, thereby gradually constructing new understanding. b) By becoming co-creators of a fictional text in a process of aesthetic learning the students developed several perspectives on the literary text, which is one of the main goals in studies of literature in the subject of Swedish. c) The participants’ negotiations involving a number of semiotic resources showed a development of text understanding on an advanced level. It also showed knowing as something emerging out of social interaction where teachers play an essential role by providing aesthetic as well as traditional scaffolding. A central conclusion is that exploring ways of learning where various semiotic recourses are given focus in the process of shaping a final product, e.g. a theatre show, host potential for students’ development of text understanding. The potential for learning seems to relate to producing knowledge rather than reproducing. Verbal and physical expressions of text understanding form new understanding in an on-going spiral. A contribution of the study to the field is showing the potential of embodied knowledge in literary didactics without a master-servant relationship between school subjects. It is suggested that increased focus on embodied knowledge and aesthetic learning might help students to develop reading skills.

The diploma thesis deals with the book genre Erstlesebuch (book for beginner readers) as educational material in the context of foreign language education at the levels of Basic Users (A0/1-A2). In the context of first language teaching, this specific genre belongs to the field of literature, the didactic of literature, and the didactic of reading. The goal of this diploma thesis is to present different possibilities of didactic activities with Erstlesebuch in the context of second language teaching and to formulate criteria for choosing an appropriate text. The theoretical part describes the context of foreign language education and the role of literature in this context, with consideration for the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The theoretical part also presents the specifics of the book genre Erstlesebuch itself. The empirical part of this thesis is based on several investigations: firstly on a complex analysis (readability and text structure) of six Erstlesebuch and secondly on empirical research in reading with schoolchildren at higher grades of an elementary school (children at the age of 13-15). These results are compared to the results of similar research done with Austrian beginner readers (children between the ages of 7 and 9). The final part of the thesis concludes...