LEARNING SUPPORT FOR TENSE SELECTION OF ENGLISH
COMPOSITION BY ASKING BACK QUESTIONS
Hiroki Hidaka, Yasuhiko Watanabe, Kenji Umemoto, Yuusuke Taniguchi and Yoshihiro Okada
Ryukoku University, Dep. of Media Informatics, Seta, Otsu, Shiga, Japan
K
eywords:
Learning Support for English Composition, Asking Back Question, Past Tense, Present Perfect Tense.
Abstract:
There are several differences between Japanese and English expressions, such as the usage of tenses. Japanese
speakers generally use the past tense in Japanese sentences whether the past actions or events have some
connection with the presents. Because of the usage of the past tense in Japanese, Japanese speakers often
mistakenly use the past tense in English sentences when they should use the present perfect tense. In order to
select suitable tenses in English sentences, Japanese speakers should pay attention to the presence of connec-
tion between the past and the present because they are not described clearly in Japanese sentences. To solve
this problem, in this paper, we propose a learning support method for English composition by using asking
back questions. Our system asks users back, make them pay attention to the presence of connection between
the past and the present, and help them to determine which tense is suitable, the past tense or the present
perfect tense.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is difficult for Japanese students to study English
writing because there are several differences between
Japanese and English expressions. For example,
Japanese speakers treat tenses differently from En-
glish speakers. Take the past tense and the present
perfect tense for example. In English, the past tense
and the present perfect tense are used to talk about the
past. The past tense is used to talk about past actions
and events.
(ex 1) I told him yesterday.
In (ex 1), the speaker uses the past tense of tell, told,
and intends to show the action is the past action. On
the other hand, the present perfect tense is used to
show that past actions or events have some connec-
tion with the present.
(ex 2) I have already told him.
In (ex 2), the speaker uses the present perfect tense
of tell, have told, and intends to show the action has
some connection with the present. As shown, in En-
glish, it is necessary to show clearly whether past ac-
tions or eventshavesome connection with the present.
On the other hand, in Japanese, it is not necessary to
show clearly whether past actions or eventshavesome
connection with the present. For example,
Figure 1: The translation process of Japanese sentences
about the past into English: 1. judgement about the pres-
ence of connection between the past and the present, 2.
translation.
(ex 3) kinou (yesterday), kare ni (him) hanashita
(told).
(ex 4) mou (already) kare ni (him) hanashita (told).
(ex 3) and (ex 4) should be translated as (ex 1) and
(ex 2), respectively. However, in both (ex 3) and (ex
4), the Japanese speakers use hanashita (told), which
is the past tense of hanasu (tell). As shown, Japanese
speakers generally use the past tense in Japanese sen-
tences whether the past actions or events have some
connection with the presents. Because of the usage
of the past tense in Japanese, Japanese students of-
ten mistakenly use the past tense in English sentences
170
Hidaka H., Watanabe Y., Umemoto K., Taniguchi Y. and Okada Y..
LEARNING SUPPORT FOR TENSE SELECTION OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION BY ASKING BACK QUESTIONS.
DOI: 10.5220/0003918601700174
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 170-174
ISBN: 978-989-8565-06-8
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Figure 2: System overview.
when they should use the present perfect tense. In
order to select suitable tenses in English sentences,
Japanese students should pay attention to the presence
of connection between the past and the present be-
cause they are not described clearly in Japanese sen-
tences (Figure 1).
A considerable number of studies have been made
on English composition support by extracting En-
glish expressions from Web documents (Oshika 05)
(Takeda 94) (Yamamoto 99) (EDP 07). In these stud-
ies, however, little attention has been given to the dif-
ferences between Japanese and English expressions.
Suppose that a Japanese student wants to translate (ex
4), and then, (ex 1) and (ex 2) are given as the transla-
tion examples of (ex 4) to the student. If the user does
not know that the presence of connection between the
past and the present is the key to distinguish the past
tense and the present perfect tense, it is difficult to
determine which example sentence is proper. As a re-
sult, it is important to make students pay attention to
the presence of connection between the past and the
present.
To solve this problem, we propose a learning sup-
port method for tense selection of English composi-
tion by asking back questions. Our system asks users
back, make them pay attention to the presence of con-
nection between the past and the present, and help
them to determine which tense is suitable, the past
tense or the present perfect tense.
2 ASKING BACK QUESTIONS
ABOUT CONNECTION
BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE
PRESENT
In this study, we deal with two types of tenses to talk
about the past.
past tense we use this tense to talk about the past:
short, quickly finished actions and happenings.
For example, this tense is used in (ex 1).
present perfect tense we use this tense to say that
something in the past is connected with the
present in some way. For example, this tense is
used in (ex 2).
As mentioned, because of the usage of the past tense
in Japanese, Japanese students often mistakenly use
the past tense in English sentences when they should
use the present perfect tense. The key to determining
which tense is suitable is to pay attention to the pres-
ence of connection between the past and the present.
To solve this problem, our system asks users back
and make them pay attention to the presence of con-
nection between the past and the present. Figure 2
shows the overview of our system. Our system ap-
plies morphological analysis(Kurohashi 05) to an in-
put sentence, extracts a predicate verb in the past tense
from it, generates two types of asking back questions
according to the rules in Figure 3, and gives them to
LEARNINGSUPPORTFORTENSESELECTIONOFENGLISHCOMPOSITIONBYASKINGBACKQUESTIONS
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(a) Generation rules of asking back questions for the
past tense
(b) Generation rules of asking back questions for the
present perfect tense
Figure 3: Generation rules of asking back questions for the
past tense and present perfect tense
the user. As shown in Figure 3, asking back questions
consist of questions and time relation charts. Take (ex
5) for example.
(ex 5) sakuban (last night), kare ni (him) hanashita
(tell).
From (ex 5), our system extracts hanashita (told)” as
a predicate verb in the past tense. Then, according to
the rules in Figure 3, our system generates two types
of asking back questions:
asking back question for the past tense (Figure 4
(a))
asking back question for the present perfect tense
(Figure 4 (b))
Then, the user answers the asking back questions
while he/she pays attention to the presence of con-
nection between the past and the present. According
to the answer, our system generates an explanation
and an example sentence. By using the explanation
and example sentence, the user can translate (ex 5)
into English. Figure 5 (a) shows the explanation and
example sentence which our system gives to the user
when he/she determines that there is no connection
between the past and the present. On the other hand,
(a) An example of asking back questions for the past
tense
(b) An example of asking back questions for the
present perfect tense
Figure 4: Examples of asking back questions for the past
tense and present perfect tense
Figure 5 (b) shows the explanation and example sen-
tence which our system gives to the user when he/she
determines that there is some connection between the
past and the present.
3 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
To evaluate our method, we examined whether eight
Japanese students could select suitable tenses for the
given sentences. In this experiments, we gave the fol-
lowing Japanese sentences to the students.
(problem 1) kinou (yesterday), kare ha (he) koko ni
(here) tsuita (arrived).
(problem 2) 2 jikan mae (two hours ago), sono hik-
ouki ha (the airplane) ririku shita (took off).
(problem 3) watashi ha (I) kagi wo (key) nakushita
(lost). dakara (as a result) ima (now) ie ni (home)
hairenai (cannot enter).
(problem 4) dareka ga (someone) watashi no (my)
credit card wo (credit card) nusunda (stole). dakara
(as a result), ima (now) nani mo (anything) kaenai
(cannot buy).
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Table 1: Experimental Results.
first test second test
(no asking back questions) (asking back questions)
past tense present perfect tense past tense present perfect tense
(problem 1) 8 0 7 1
(problem 2) 8 0 7 1
(problem 3) 7 1 0 8
(problem 4) 7 1 1 7
explanation “predicate verb (past tense)” is the past
action or event. Please use the verb in the past
tense when you translate this sentence into En-
glish.
example kinou (yesterday), shukudai ga (homework)
owatta (finished).
I finished my homework yesterday.
(a) The explanation and example which our system gives to
the user when he/she determines that there is no connec-
tion between the past and the present.
explanation “predicate verb (past tense)” is the past
action or event which is connected with the
present in some way. Please use the verb in the
present perfect tense when you translate this sen-
tence into English. However, you do not use
the present perfect tense when the sentence in-
cludes adverbs of finishing time (like yesterday,
last week, in 1990, etc).
example mou (already) shukudai ha (homework)
owatta (finished).
I have already finished my homework.
(b) The explanation and example which our system gives to
the user when he/she determines that there is some con-
nection between the past and the present.
Figure 5: Examples of explanations and example sentences
generated according to user’s determination of the presence
of connection between the past and the present. In fact, ex-
planations are written in Japanese and “predicate verb (past
tense)” is replaced by a predicate verb (past tense) extracted
from an input sentence.
In (problem 1) and (problem 2), the suitable tenses
were past tenses. On the other hand, in (problem
3) and (problem 4), the suitable tenses were present
perfect tenses. In this experiment, we conducted two
tests. In the first test, our system did not give asking
back questions to the students. We examined whether
the students could select suitable tenses without the
support of our system. In the second test, our sys-
tem gave asking back questions to the students. We
examined whether the students could select suitable
tenses by using asking back questions. Table 1 shows
the experimental results. In Table 1, underlined num-
bers show the numbers of students who select the suit-
able tense. As shown in Table 1, in the first test,
the students mainly used past tenses. The result of
the first test shows that Japanese speakers often mis-
takenly use the past tense in English sentences when
they should use the present perfect tense. On the other
hand, the result of the second test shows our method
is useful to help users to select suitable tenses in En-
glish sentences. However, two students mistakenly
determined that present perfect tenses were suitable
for (problem 1) and (problem 2) in the second test.
In the first test, they correctly determined that past
tenses were suitable for (problem 1) and (problem 2).
We interviewedthese two students and found that they
did not know we do not use the present perfect tense
with adverbs of finished time. To reduce these fail-
ures, we are considering adding new explanation to
asking back questions: we do not use the present per-
fect tense with adverbs of finished time (yesterday,
two hours ago, etc.).
In order to talk about the past, we use six different
tenses in English sentences:
past tense (I worked),
past progressive tense (I was working),
present perfect tense (I have worked),
present perfect progressive tense (I have been
working),
past perfect tense (I had worked), and
past perfect progressive tense (I had been work-
ing).
In this study, we dealt with only two of them: the past
tense and the present perfect tense. We will examine
whether our asking back method is useful when other
kinds of tenses are suitable for the given sentences.
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