Skip to main content

The Fawlty article tutor

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 1992)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 608))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Non-native speakers of English often have trouble with the correct use of articles in English. The rules found in grammar texts are based on typical usage and are often incomplete, too specialised, and riddled with exceptions. Because it is difficult to remember all the rules, people memorise a few basic rules and try to generalise to all situations. This paper deals with the implementation of Fawlty, an intelligent tutoring system which attempts to teach correct article usage. Fawlty classifies nouns along six dimensions and teaches the rules that govern article usage for particular values of two or more of these dimensions. Student modelling and various heuristics are used to make the tutoring more responsive to student needs.

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

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Chesterman, A. (1991). On Definiteness. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Grosz, B. J. (1986). Attention, Intentions, and the Structure of Discourse. Computational Linguistics. 12(3), 175–204.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kurup, M. (1991). The Fawlty Article Tutor. M.Sc Thesis Proposal. Department of Computational Science, University of Saskatchewan.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Macdonald, D. D. (1978). Subsequent Reference: Syntactic and Rhetorical Constraints. In D. Waltz (Ed.), TINLAP-2.1 (pp. 64–72). University of Illinois: ACM/ACL.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Swan, M. (1980). Practical English Usage. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Webber, B. L. (1978). Description Formation and Discourse Model Synthesis. In D. Waltz (Ed.), TINLAP-2. 1 (pp. 42–50). University of Illinois: ACM/ACL.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Wren, P. C., & Martin, H. (1990). High School English Grammar and Composition (127th ed.). New Delhi, India: S. Chand and Company Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Claude Frasson Gilles Gauthier Gordon I. McCalla

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Kurup, M., Greer, J.E., McCalla, G.I. (1992). The Fawlty article tutor. In: Frasson, C., Gauthier, G., McCalla, G.I. (eds) Intelligent Tutoring Systems. ITS 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 608. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55606-0_12

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55606-0_12

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55606-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47254-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics