Text elaboration through named entities definition and questions related to verbs in simplified portuguese texts

Author(s)

Marcelo Adriano Amancio

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC/SB)
• Defense date: 2011-06-15

Examining board members

Sandra Maria Aluisio; Maria das Graças Volpe Nunes; Osvaldo Novais de Oliveira Junior

• Advisor: Sandra Maria Aluisio

Abstract

This research addresses the topic of Textual Elaboration for low-literacy readers, i.e. people at the rudimentary and basic literacy levels according to the National Indicator of Functional Literacy (INAF, 2009). Text Elaboration consists of a set of techniques that adds extra material in texts using, traditionally, definitions, synonyms, antonyms, or any external information to assist in text understanding. The main goal of this research was the proposal of two methods of Textual Elaboration: (1) the use of short definitions for Named Entities in texts and (2) assignment of wh-questions related to verbs in text. The first task used the Rembrandt named entity recognition system and short definitions of Wikipedia. It was implemented in PorSimples web Educational Facilita tool. This method was preliminarily evaluated with a small group of low-literacy readers. The evaluation results were positive, what indicates that the tool was useful for improving the text understanding. The assignment of wh-questions related to verbs task was defined, studied, implemented and assessed during this research. Its evaluation was conducted with NLP researches instead of with low-literacy readers. There are good evidences that the text elaboration methods and resources developed here are useful in helping text understanding for low-literacy readers (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 08/08020-2 - Text Elaboration through Named Entities Definition and Questions Related to Verbs in Simplified Portuguese Texts
• Grantee: Marcelo Adriano Amancio
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master