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Article published In:
Natural language processing for learner corpus research
Edited by Kristopher Kyle
[International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 7:1] 2021
► pp. 83–130

Analyzing the linguistic complexity of German learner language in a reading comprehension task

Using proficiency classification to investigate short answer data, cross-data generalizability, and the impact of linguistic analysis quality

| University of Tübingen
| University of Tübingen

While traditionally linguistic complexity analysis of learner language is mostly based on essays, there is increasing interest in other task types. This is crucial for obtaining a broader empirical basis for characterizing language proficiency and highlights the need to advance our understanding of how task and learner properties interact in shaping the linguistic complexity of learner productions. It also makes it important to determine which complexity measures generalize well across which tasks.

In this paper, we investigate the linguistic complexity of answers to reading comprehension questions written by foreign language learners of German at the college level. Analyzing the corpus with computational linguistic methods identifying a wide range of complexity features, we explore which linguistic complexity analyses can successfully be performed for such short answers, how learner proficiency impacts the results, how generalizable they are across different contexts, and how the quality of the underlying analysis impacts the results.

Keywords: complexity analysis, L2 German, proficiency assessment, reading comprehension, natural language processing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Related work
  • 3.This study
  • 4.Data
    • 4.1CREG-29K
    • 4.2CREG-KU, CREG-OSU, and CREG-7K
    • 4.3CREG-104
      • 4.3.1Manual annotation of learner language and target hypotheses
  • 5.Automatic complexity analysis
    • 5.1Feature description
      • Lexical complexity
      • Morphological complexity
      • Phrasal complexity
      • Clausal complexity
      • Discourse complexity
      • Language use
      • Human processing
      • Surface measures
    • 5.2System description
  • 6.Determining German L2 proficiency using linguistic complexity analysis
    • 6.1Course-level classification
      • 6.1.1Set-up of study 1
      • 6.1.2Results of study 1
    • 6.2Generalizability of complexity modeling
      • 6.2.1Set-up of study 2
      • 6.2.2Results of study 2
  • 7.Performance of complexity models on learner language
    • 7.1Accuracy of NLP analysis
      • 7.1.1Set-up of study 3.1
      • 7.1.2Results of study 3.1
    • 7.2Effect on linguistic complexity analysis
      • 7.2.1Set-up of study 3.2
      • 7.2.2Results of study 3.2
    • 7.3Effect on proficiency classification
      • 7.3.1Set-up of study 3.3
      • 7.3.2Results of study 3.3
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.20006.wei
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