Skip to main content

Classification of Speaking Proficiency Level by Machine Learning and Feature Selection

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
  • 2766 Accesses

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10108))

Abstract

Analysis of publicly available language learning corpora can be useful for extracting characteristic features of learners from different proficiency levels. This can then be used to support language learning research and the creation of educational resources. In this paper, we classify the words and parts of speech of transcripts from different speaking proficiency levels found in the NICT-JLE corpus. The characteristic features of learners who have the equivalent spoken proficiency of CEFR levels A1 through to B2 were extracted by analyzing the data with the support vector machine method. In particular, we apply feature selection to find a set of characteristic features that achieve optimal classification performance, which can be used to predict spoken learner proficiency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://alaginrc.nict.go.jp/nict_jle/indexE.html.

  2. 2.

    http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws5tags.html, http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws7tags.html.

  3. 3.

    http://geta.ex.nii.ac.jp.

References

  1. Izumi, E., Uchimoto, K., Isahara, H.: The NICT JLE Corpus. ACL Publishing (2004). (in Japanese)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Izumi, E., Uchimoto, K., Isahara, H.: The NICT JLE corpus: exploiting the language learner’s speech database for research and education. Int. J. Comput. Internet Manag. 12(2), 119–125 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Izumi, E., Uchimoto, K., Isahara, H.: The overview of the SST speech corpus of Japanese learner English and evaluation through the experiment on automatic detection of learners’ errors. In: 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, pp. 1435–1438 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Council of Europe: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Tono, Y. (ed.): The CEFR-J Handbook: A Resource Book for Using CAN-DO Descriptors for English Language Teaching. Taishukan Publishing (2013). (in Japanese)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Page, E.B.: The use of the computer in analyzing student essays. Int. Rev. Educ. 14(2), 210–225 (1968)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Supnithi, T., Uchimoto, K., Saiga, T., Izumi, E., Virach, S., Isahara, H.: Automatic proficiency level checking based on SST corpus. In: Proceedings of the RANLP, pp. 29–33 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Abe, M.: Frequency change patterns across proficiency levels in Japanese EFL learner speech. Apples: J. Appl. Lang. Stud. 8(3), 85–96 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Flanagan, B., Hirokawa, S.: The relationship of English foreign language learner proficiency and an entropy based measure. IEE 1(3), 29–38 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Joachims, T.: Training linear SVMs in linear time. In: Proceedings of the ACM-KDD, pp. 217–226 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Sakai, T., Hirokawa, S.: Feature words that classify problem sentence in scientific article. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services, pp. 360–367 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15H02778, 24242017, and 15J04830.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brendan Flanagan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Flanagan, B., Hirokawa, S., Kaneko, E., Izumi, E. (2017). Classification of Speaking Proficiency Level by Machine Learning and Feature Selection. In: Wu, TT., Gennari, R., Huang, YM., Xie, H., Cao, Y. (eds) Emerging Technologies for Education. SETE 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10108. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52836-6_72

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52836-6_72

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52835-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52836-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics