Automating Repeated Exposure to Target Vocabulary for Second Language Learners

A web-based tool is described, called the Supplementary Reading Provider (SRP), devised to find related readings according to learners’ lexical level which offer repeated exposure to target vocabulary. The SRP exploits text retrieval techniques based upon the hypothesis that there is a parallel between text similarity measurement on the one hand and the pedagogical task of providing supplementary readings which offer repeated exposure to new vocabulary on the other. Two criteria are compared for finding supplementary passages from a corpus of reading: one matches keywords of the original passage and those of the corpus passages, the other matches target vocabulary words without regard to keywords. The integration of SRP into an web-based language learning platform called IWiLL is described as