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Exercise Generation on Language Specification

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Recent Advances in Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST 2017)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 569))

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Abstract

Exercise generation on language specification is a challenging problem, because of the richness of the objects in the domain. In this paper we discuss Mgbeg (Meta-Grammar-Based Exercise Generator) – a toolkit for exercise generation on context-free languages. Mgbeg approach is based on a meta-grammar formalism and tool, used to define a set of similar exercises. Mgbeg is simple attributed grammar used to describe the set of valid exercise (and randomly generate one of them). Each exercise typically contains several attributes calculated during the generation steps: namely, one or more formal specification of the language (context free grammar); the exercise statement; other information such as examples, common mistakes, validation data, to be used in the construction of the exercise statement, solution, and assessment steps. Complementary the toolkit provides a grammar module, with functionality for grammar comparison, sentence generation and recognition; a template engine (to help in textual attributes calculation).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The same knowledge is important for applied linguistics and other related areas.

  2. 2.

    In general practical situations \(2\times 2\)-matrices proved to be sufficient.

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Acknowledgments

The work of Eliana Grande was supported by PIQ IF Goiano through the fellowship no. 02/2013. The work of J.J. Almeida was supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, Algoritmi, Universidade Do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    J. João Almeida

  2. Department of Math and Applications, Universidade Do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Eliana Grande & Georgi Smirnov

Authors
  1. J. João Almeida
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  2. Eliana Grande
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  3. Georgi Smirnov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. João Almeida .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. DEI/FCT, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Baixo Mondego, Portugal

    Álvaro Rocha

  2. Nova IMS, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Maria Correia

  3. College of Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

    Hojjat Adeli

  4. DSI/EEUM, Universidade do Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

    Luís Paulo Reis

  5. DIMES, Università della Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende, Italy

    Sandra Costanzo

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Almeida, J.J., Grande, E., Smirnov, G. (2017). Exercise Generation on Language Specification. In: Rocha, Á., Correia, A., Adeli, H., Reis, L., Costanzo, S. (eds) Recent Advances in Information Systems and Technologies. WorldCIST 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 569. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56535-4_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56535-4_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56534-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56535-4

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