Conference article

Waste not; want not: Towards a system architecture for ICALL based on NLP component re-use

Elena Volodina
Språkbanken (Swedish Language Bank), University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Lars Borin
Språkbanken (Swedish Language Bank), University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Hrafn Lofsson
School of Computer Science, Reykjavík University, Iceland

Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir
School of Humanities, University of Iceland, Iceland

Guðmundur Örn Leifsson
School of Engineering and Natural Sciences, University of Iceland, Iceland

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Published in: Proceedings of the SLTC 2012 workshop on NLP for CALL; Lund; 25th October; 2012

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 80:6, p. 47-58

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Published: 2012-11-12

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ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)

Abstract

It is a surprising fact that; despite the existence of various mature Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools and resources that can potentially benefit language learning; very few projects are devoted to development of Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) applications. This paper presents an on-going collaborative project whose overall aim is to develop an opensource system architecture for supporting ICALL systems that will facilitate re-use of existing NLP tools and resources on a plug-and-play basis. The two language teams – Icelandic and Swedish – have tested the architecture design by implementing two ICALL applications which convincingly show how principles defined by Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA); with web services as implementation technology; can benefit re-use of existing NLP components in ICALL applications. This paper introduces the project; provides the theoretical and practical background; describes the different paths adopted within the two language teams; and presents the first results.

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