Personalized exercises for preposition learning

Abstract

We present a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system that generates fill-in-the-blank items for preposition usage. The system takes a set of carrier sentences as input, chooses a preposition in each sentence as the key, and then automatically generates distractors. It personalizes item selection for the user in two ways. First, it logs items to which the user previously gave incorrect answers, and offers similar items in a future session as review. Second, it progresses from easier to harder sentences, to minimize any hindrance on preposition learning that might be posed by difficult vocabulary.