TechnologyEnhancedEmotionExpressionLearning
Appropriatelexicaluseisonedauntingtaskformanylanguagelearnerseventhough
theyhaveawiderangeofvocabulary.Itisparticularlytruewhentheyexpresstheir
emotions. With inadequate command of emotion words, learners tend to use
common emotion words (e.g., “angry” or “happy”) to describe their feelings.
Sometimes, they attempt to use alternative words; they would consult thesauri for
synonyms lookup. However, the synonyms thesauri suggest are typically listed in
alphabetical order and short of contextual information, which seem unable to help
learnerstellthenuancedemotionwords.Asaresult,thesynonymslearnerschoose
areverylikelytofailtofitthescenariostheywouldliketodescribe.Bearingthisin
mind, we utilized machine learning technique to develop an emotion wording
assistancesystem,RESOLVEtohelplearnerswiththeiremotionalexpressions.More
specifically,thesystemsuggestsappropriatesynonymousemotionwordswhichare
rankedbasedonlearners’contexts.Inaddition,thecorrespondingusageinformation
involvingthedescriptionoftheusagescenarios,definitionsandexamplesentencesis
alsoprovided.Suchinformationaimstofacilitatelearners’cleardescriptionoftheir
emotions. ToevaluatetheeffectivenessoftheRESOLVEsystem,wecarriedoutanexperiment
with36EFLcollegestudentsinanAsiancountry.Wecomparedtheirwritingtasksin
thepre-andpost-teststoexaminetheappropriatenessofemotionwordingandthe
difficulty of emotion words students achieved. Two native English speaker judges
wereinvolvedtoevaluatestudents’performance.Theresultsshowedthatwiththe
help of RESOLVE, all students achieved substantial improvements in appropriate
emotionwording(i.e.,theaveragescoresincreasedfrom56.6to88.3outof100.0).
Importantly, the less proficient gained more benefit from RESOLVE than high
proficient ones (the respective error reduction rates are 76.2% and 49.0%). On the
otherhand,thedifficultylevelofemotionwordsstudentsusedalsoincreasedfrom
51.5%to67.7%,inferringthatstudentshadabettercommandofemotionwords.In
addition,students’attitudestowardRESOLVEwerepredominantlypositive.