Re: [school-discuss] English teacher apps

[Dennis Daniels <ddaniels@magic.fr>]

Testing now, Robin. Wow. Thanks for such a quick response!  Did you 
write it in perl? Do you have any intention of releasing the code for 
it? Do you have any interest in developing this a bit further? Would you 
like some help?

A big plus would be identifying which words that were used and allowing 
the teacher to supply their own list of words. I'm an English teacher, 
as you know, and so expect my students to use 'literary terms' while 
discussing a text. Furthermore, we, in the course of discussion, spend 
some time brainstorming words and phrases related to certain topics 
which the students are to then write about in their papers. If a teacher 
could supply that list to your AWL decoder then the teacher will be 
better equipped to hold the students accountable for at least trying to 
use the new terms in their papers. This of course applies to any domain, 
not just English, the same could easily apply to papers in History, 
Science etc.

Showing the English staff the types of data I can pull from student's 
papers using style and diction has really increased the interest, at 
least in my school, in better using technology to pinpoint strengths and 
weaknesses in student's use of passive voice, reliance on pronouns, 
length of sentences etc. Of course, with any discipline, vocabulary 
development is critical but rather lacking in useful tools. Your tool 
could provide teachers with an opportunity to discuss the proper use of 
the terms as it relates to the grammar required to create a coherent 
flow in the work itself.

I'm very excited by your application! With your permission, I'd like to 
have my students try it out, maybe this week. Would you be willing to 
have your server hammered a bit with my students' work? Would you be 
interested in finding some vector upon which we could collaborate?

sincere regards,
Dennis Daniels




robin wrote:
> robin wrote:
>
> > Dennis Daniels wrote:
> >
> > >  > Quite possibly. There are many things that teachers still do 
> > > better than
> > >  > computers. A computer might be a good replacement for a bad 
> > > teacher, but
> > >  > it is rarely even close to a good one.
> > >
> > > Yes, I agree, however, but the good teachers can be made great by 
> > > applying the tools that help the teachers better analyze an entire 
> > > group's needs. I'm looking for apps that help remove the drudgery of 
> > > pointing out that ending a sentence with a preposition is bad form, 
> > > that one must start a sentence with a capital letter and if you make 
> > > a spelling mistake it is the student's responsibility to correct it.
> > >
> > > I was driving home this evening and could think of scripts, off the 
> > > top of my head, that would make all English teacher's lives much more 
> > > productive...
> > >
> > > *histogram of all words a student uses diffed against the Academic 
> > > Word List
>
> Well, no histograms as yet, but ten cups of coffee later, I've come up 
> with a web-based application that will check a file against the AWL. 
> It's rather slow (too many loops and big arrays!) and I'm not sure how 
> reliable it is, but the results I've had so far seem to make sense. 
> Here's what it made of some files I fed it ...
>
> Julia Driver: "The Conflation of Moral and Epistemic Virtue"
> Total words in file = 13819
> Words in AWL = 250 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 1 = 27 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 2 = 47 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 3 = 22 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 4 = 14 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 5 = 53 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 6 = 36 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 7 = 12 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 8 = 12 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 9 = 12 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 10 = 12 per thousand
>
> One of my papers
> Total words in file = 7490
> Words in AWL = 91 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 1 = 15 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 2 = 8 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 3 = 14 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 4 = 8 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 5 = 9 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 6 = 9 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 7 = 7 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 8 = 6 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 9 = 6 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 10 = 5 per thousand
>
> One of my students' papers
> Total words in file = 1265
> Words in AWL = 76 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 1 = 12 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 2 = 5 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 3 = 8 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 4 = 5 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 5 = 6 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 6 = 12 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 7 = 10 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 8 = 3 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 9 = 6 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 10 = 4 per thousand
>
> First episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
> Total words in file = 7934
> Words in AWL = 22 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 1 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 2 = 0 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 3 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 4 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 5 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 6 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 7 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 8 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 9 = 2 per thousand
> Words in Sublist 10 = 2 per thousand
>
> If you want to play around with it, it's at 
> http://lists.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin/cgibin/awlcheck.cgi
>
> Robin