Re: [school-discuss] English teacher apps

[robin <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR>]

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

--
"I'm very into Britney Spears' early work, before she sold out, so 
mostly her, um, finger painting and macaroni art."
Dawn - BtVS

Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent Universitesi
Ankara 06533
Turkey

www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin