Three English Learner Assistance Systems Using Automatic Paraphrasing Techniques

We developed three systems based on automatic paraphrasing techniques to help English learners and English-language beginners. One system extracts personal error patterns in the user’s English usage. The second transforms English sentences containing the letters “l” and “r” into sentences containing fewer instances of these letters, which Japanese people have trouble pronouncing properly in English. This system could be used, for example, to transform a draft of a presentation that a Japanese speaker was to present to an audience. The third is an annotation system that provides definition sentences of difficult English words, making them easier to understand. We believe that these systems will be useful both for learners of English and in studies on second-language acquisition.