Detmar Meurers

Dominik Glandorf, Peng Cui, Detmar Meurers et al.

Chatbots based on large language models offer cheap conversation practice opportunities for language learners. However, they are hard to control for linguistic forms that correspond to learners' current needs, such as grammar. We control grammar in chatbot conversation practice by grounding a dialogue response generation model in a pedagogical repository of grammar skills. We also explore how this control helps learners to produce specific grammar. We comprehensively evaluate prompting, fine-tuning, and decoding strategies for grammar-controlled dialogue response generation. Strategically decoding Llama3 outperforms GPT-3.5 when tolerating minor response quality losses. Our simulation predicts grammar-controlled responses to support grammar acquisition adapted to learner proficiency. Existing language learning chatbots and research on second language acquisition benefit from these affordances. Code available on GitHub.

Jennifer Meyer, Olaf Köller, Thorben Jansen et al.

With digital learning environments becoming more prevalent, the ease with which generative AI enables the scalable production of real-time, automated feedback holds the potential to reshape learning and teaching experiences. This meeting report synthesizes the interdisciplinary perspectives of 50 scholars from educational psychology, computer science, science education, and the learning sciences on the use of generative AI for feedback and its promises and risks in educational practice. We highlight points of convergence in the scholarship, identify areas of debate and unresolved challenges, and outline open questions and future directions for research and educational practice that emerged from structured small-group activities designed to bridge disciplinary barriers.

Haemanth Santhi Ponnusamy, Detmar Meurers

How can a learner systematically prepare for reading a book they are interested in? In this paper,we explore how computational linguistic methods such as distributional semantics, morphological clustering, and exercise generation can be combined with graph-based learner models to answer this question both conceptually and in practice. Based on the highly structured learner model and concepts from network analysis, the learner is guided to efficiently explore the targeted lexical space. They practice using multi-gap learning activities generated from the book focused on words that are central to the targeted lexical space. As such the approach offers a unique combination of computational linguistic methods with concepts from network analysis and the tutoring system domain to support learners in achieving their individual, reading task-based learning goals.

Sowmya Vajjala, Detmar Meurers

We propose a new method for evaluating the readability of simplified sentences through pair-wise ranking. The validity of the method is established through in-corpus and cross-corpus evaluation experiments. The approach correctly identifies the ranking of simplified and unsimplified sentences in terms of their reading level with an accuracy of over 80%, significantly outperforming previous results. To gain qualitative insights into the nature of simplification at the sentence level, we studied the impact of specific linguistic features. We empirically confirm that both word-level and syntactic features play a role in comparing the degree of simplification of authentic data. To carry out this research, we created a new sentence-aligned corpus from professionally simplified news articles. The new corpus resource enriches the empirical basis of sentence-level simplification research, which so far relied on a single resource. Most importantly, it facilitates cross-corpus evaluation for simplification, a key step towards generalizable results.