DECOR: Improving Coherence in L2 English Writing with a Novel Benchmark for Incoherence Detection, Reasoning, and Rewriting

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhang, Xuanming, Diaz, Anthony, Chen, Zixun, Wu, Qingyang, Qian, Kun, Voss, Erik, Yu, Zhou
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Zhang, Xuanming
Diaz, Anthony
Chen, Zixun
Wu, Qingyang
Qian, Kun
Voss, Erik
Yu, Zhou
author_facet Zhang, Xuanming
Diaz, Anthony
Chen, Zixun
Wu, Qingyang
Qian, Kun
Voss, Erik
Yu, Zhou
contents Coherence in writing, an aspect that second-language (L2) English learners often struggle with, is crucial in assessing L2 English writing. Existing automated writing evaluation systems primarily use basic surface linguistic features to detect coherence in writing. However, little effort has been made to correct the detected incoherence, which could significantly benefit L2 language learners seeking to improve their writing. To bridge this gap, we introduce DECOR, a novel benchmark that includes expert annotations for detecting incoherence in L2 English writing, identifying the underlying reasons, and rewriting the incoherent sentences. To our knowledge, DECOR is the first coherence assessment dataset specifically designed for improving L2 English writing, featuring pairs of original incoherent sentences alongside their expert-rewritten counterparts. Additionally, we fine-tuned models to automatically detect and rewrite incoherence in student essays. We find that incorporating specific reasons for incoherence during fine-tuning consistently improves the quality of the rewrites, achieving a result that is favored in both automatic and human evaluations.
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publishDate 2024
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spellingShingle DECOR: Improving Coherence in L2 English Writing with a Novel Benchmark for Incoherence Detection, Reasoning, and Rewriting
Zhang, Xuanming
Diaz, Anthony
Chen, Zixun
Wu, Qingyang
Qian, Kun
Voss, Erik
Yu, Zhou
Computation and Language
Coherence in writing, an aspect that second-language (L2) English learners often struggle with, is crucial in assessing L2 English writing. Existing automated writing evaluation systems primarily use basic surface linguistic features to detect coherence in writing. However, little effort has been made to correct the detected incoherence, which could significantly benefit L2 language learners seeking to improve their writing. To bridge this gap, we introduce DECOR, a novel benchmark that includes expert annotations for detecting incoherence in L2 English writing, identifying the underlying reasons, and rewriting the incoherent sentences. To our knowledge, DECOR is the first coherence assessment dataset specifically designed for improving L2 English writing, featuring pairs of original incoherent sentences alongside their expert-rewritten counterparts. Additionally, we fine-tuned models to automatically detect and rewrite incoherence in student essays. We find that incorporating specific reasons for incoherence during fine-tuning consistently improves the quality of the rewrites, achieving a result that is favored in both automatic and human evaluations.
title DECOR: Improving Coherence in L2 English Writing with a Novel Benchmark for Incoherence Detection, Reasoning, and Rewriting
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.19650