natural language processing Archives

Machine Learning Summer School – Day 4

February 10, 2020July 6, 2017 by Jo Sayers

Today was the fourth day of ALTA’s Machine Learning for ELT Summer School in Crete and we focused on psychometric testing for the first part of the day and then vocabulary acquisition later in the afternoon. As with other days, this summary is the information as I understood it. I welcome all corrections, clarifications and comments.

Machine Learning Summer School – Day 3

February 10, 2020July 5, 2017 by Jo Sayers

This week ELTjam are at the ALTA Machine Learning Summer School in Crete and you can read regular updates of what’s happening here on the blog. Today, Day 3, we had an insight into the human element to the Write & Improve product, both in terms of the annotation done to the the text by human annotators, and the insights that teachers can get into their learners’ progress. This post is a summary of the day and a list of questions it would be great if we could collectively answer!

Machine Learning Summer School – Day 2

February 10, 2020July 4, 2017 by Jo Sayers

All this week ELTjam are at the Machine Learning for ELT Conference in Crete. This post looks at the Day 2 action, including more detail on automated error correction techniques, error correction related to content words, the importance of Learner Experience Design (LXD) with all this theory, and finally a look at the Write & Improve product from ALTA.

Machine Learning Summer School – Day 1

February 10, 2020July 3, 2017 by Jo Sayers

This week is the ALTA’s Machine Learning for Digital ELT Summer School here in Crete, and ELTjam will be blogging (hopefully each day) from the event. This is a summary of the input from Day 1, where we discussed natural language processing, automated essay assessment and error detection and correction. A big day!

Apple’s electric car and the death of language teaching as we know it

January 30, 2020December 2, 2015 by Nick Robinson

When I was four, going on five, a TV show called Knight Rider premiered in the UK. I loved it and remained a fan for most of my childhood (OK, I admit it; I’m still a fan). There was The Hoff, of course – all leather jackets, open shirt buttons and swagger – but the real star of the show was K.I.T.T – Knight Industries Two Thousand – the ‘advanced, artificially intelligent, self-aware and nearly indestructible car’. Over thirty years later Apple and Google are in a head-to-head race to bring K.I.T.T’s spiritual successor – the driverless car – to market. And, as a little-known and hard-to-spot side effect, the ramifications for the teaching of languages, especially English, could be huge.