PUBLICATIONS

ABSTRACT

Most of the past error correction systems for ESL learners focus on local, lexical errors in a postprocessing manner. However, learners with low English proficiency have difficulties even constructing basic sentence structure, and many grammatical errors can be prevented by presenting grammatical phrases or patterns while they are writing. To achieve this, we propose an integrated writing environment for ESL learners, called phloat to help such users look up dictionaries to find semantically appropriate and grammatical phrases in real-time. Using the system, users can look up phrases by either English or their native language (L1), without being aware of their input method. It subsequently suggests candidates to fill the slots of the phrases. Also, we cluster suggested phrases with semantic groups to help users find appropriate phrases. We conduct subject tests using the proposed system, and have found the system is useful to find the right phrases and expressions.