Using NLP for enhancing second language acquisition

Abstract

This study presents SMILLE, a system that draws on the Noticing Hypothesis and on input enhancements, addressing the lack of salience of grammatical information in online documents chosen by a given user. By means of input enhancements, the system can draw the user's attention to grammar, which could possibly lead to a higher intake per input ratio for metalinguistic information. The system receives as input an online document and submits it to a combined processing of parser and hand-written rules for detecting its grammatical structures. The input text can be freely chosen by the user, providing a more engaging experience and reflecting the user's interests. The system can enhance a total of 107 fine-grained types of grammatical structures that are based on the CEFR. An evaluation of some of those structures resulted in an overall precision of 87%.