We explore the use of segments learnt using Byte Pair Encoding (referred to as BPE units) as basic units for statistical machine translation between related languages and compare it with orthographic syllables, which are currently the best performing basic units for this translation task. BPE identifies the most frequent character sequences as basic units, while orthographic syllables are lingu...

Abstract This study was intended to compare collaborative and individual task planning effects on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance. Therefore, a group of 90 upper intermediate EFL learners were placed in three groups of Collaborative Task planning, Individual Task planning, and Control. In the experimental groups, participants were asked to do task planning collaboratively and individu...

Abstract This study was intended to compare collaborative and individual task planning effects on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance. Therefore, a group of 90 upper intermediate EFL learners were placed in three groups of Collaborative Task planning, Individual Task planning, and Control. In the experimental groups, participants were asked to do task planning collaboratively and individu...

this study investigated if different response formats (test methods) measure reading comprehension of expository text differently. the study was conducted with 48 semester 6 tesl students at a university in selangor, malaysia. these students received an expository passage having descriptive rhetorical structure followed by three response formats, namely, incomplete outline, graphic organizer, a...

bilingual dictionary use in l2 writing test performance has recently been the subject of debate. opinions differ according to how the trait is understood and whether the system favors the process-oriented or product-oriented views towards the assessment and writing skill. given the need for more empirical support, this study is aimed at investigating the availability of bilingual dictionary use...

Doing peer review has been effectively implemented to help students develop critical reading and writing skills; however, its application in Human Physiology programs is limited. The purpose of the present study was to determine the impact of peer review on Human Physiology majors' perceptions of their scientific literacy and writing skills. Students enrolled in the Scientific Writing course co...

This study examined the construct validity of the e-rater automated essay scoring engine as an alternative to human scoring in the context of TOEFL essay writing. Analyses were based on a sample of students who repeated the TOEFL within a short time period. Two e-rater scores were investigated in this study, the first based on optimally predicting the human essay score and the second based on e...

This study describes the design of the NTNU-YZU system for the automated evaluation of scientific writing shared task. We employ a convolutional neural network with the Word2Vec/GloVe embedding representation to predict whether a sentence needs language editing. For the Boolean prediction track, our best F-score of 0.6108 ranked second among the ten submissions. Our system also achieved an F-sc...

s A major limitation of making inference about treatment effect based on observational data from a non-randomized study designs is the treatment selection bias, in which the baseline characteristics of the population under one treatment could dramatically differ from the other one. If not handled properly, such sources of heterogeneity will introduce confounding effects into a causal-effect rel...

Estimation of the effect of a treatment or exposure with a causal interpretation from studies where exposure is not randomized may be biased if confounding and selection bias are not taken into appropriate account. Such adjustment for confounding is often carried out through regression modeling of the relationships among treatment, confounders, and outcome. Correct specification of the regressi...