Laurence Anthony

AntConc: design and development of a freeware corpus analysis toolkit for the technical writing classroom

In this paper, the author describes AntConc, a freeware, multi-platform, multi-purpose corpus analysis toolkit, designed by the author for specific use in the classroom. AntConc includes a powerful concor dancer, word and keyword frequency generators, tools for cluster and lexical bundle analysis, and a word distribution plot. It also offers the choice of simple wildcard searches or powerful regular expression searches, and has an extremely easy-to-use, intuitive interface. After explaining the background to AntConc, the author gives an overview of each of its tools, and explains the value to learners. Then, the author discusses the current limitations of the software, before explaining how these will be addressed in the future.

New route to α-adducts of homoallylic alcohols by an acid-catalyzed stereospecific allyl-transfer reaction from γ-adducts

Allylation of aldehydes by an allyl-transfer reaction from the gamma-adducts of homoallylic alcohols has been successfully carried out to give the corresponding alpha-adducts regiospecifically. The reaction proceeds via a hemiacetal (11), derived from an aldehyde and the homoallylic alcohol, followed by a six-membered cyclic transition state (2-oxonia[3.3]-sigmatropic rearrangement) in the presence of a Lewis acid. Moreover, the gamma-adducts are restructured into the corresponding alpha-adducts via a similar transition state by an acid catalyst, in which chirality in both anti- and syn-gamma-adducts is stereospecifically transferred to the corresponding E- and Z-alpha-adducts, respectively, with > 98% ee.

Mover: a machine learning tool to assist in the reading and writing of technical papers

When faced with the tasks of reading and writing a complex technical paper, many nonnative scientists and engineers who have a solid background in English grammar and vocabulary lack an adequate knowledge of commonly used structural patterns at the discourse level. In this paper, we propose a novel computer software tool that can assist these people in the understanding and construction of technical papers, by automatically identifying the structure of writing in different fields and disciplines. The system is tested using research article abstracts and is shown to be a fast, accurate, and useful aid in the reading and writing process.

Developing a Freeware, Multiplatform Corpus Analysis Toolkit for the Technical Writing Classroom

This paper describes the development of the AntConc corpus analysis toolkit, originally designed for use in a technical writing course at Osaka University, Japan, but now adopted in institutions throughout the world as an easy-to-use, freeware, multiplatform alternative to the many commercial concordance programs. First, I will explain how the software was originally tailored to the needs of students in the Osaka writing course and later to a general audience through the requests and feedback from teachers and students around the world. Then, I will give an overview of tools in the most recent version of AntConc and explain their value using examples from the classroom. Finally, I will discuss some of the softwares limitations and future developments, and suggest applications in professional communication

A single solution method for converting 2D assembly drawings to 3D part drawings

Abstract Although solid models play a central role in modern CAD systems, 2D CAD systems are still commonly used for designing products without complex curved faces. Therefore, an important task is to convert 2D drawings to solid models, and this is usually carried out manually even in present CAD systems. Many methods have been proposed to automatically convert orthographic part drawings of solid objects to solid models. Unfortunately, products are usually drawn as 2D assembly drawings, and therefore, these methods cannot be applied. A further problem is the difficult and time-consuming task of decomposing 2D assembly drawings into 2D part drawings. In previous work, the authors proposed a method to automatically decompose 2D assembly drawings into 3D part drawings, from which 2D part drawings can be easily generated. However, one problem with the proposed method was that the number of solutions could easily explode if the 2D assembly drawings became complex. Building on this work, here we describe a new method to automatically convert 2D assembly drawings to 3D part drawings, generating a unique solution for designers regardless of the complexity of the original 2D assembly drawings. The only requirement for the approach is that the assembly drawings consist of standard parts such as bars and plates. In 2D assembly drawings, the dimensions, part numbers and parts lists are usually drawn, and the proposed method utilizes these to obtain a unique solution.

Oral presentations in international contexts: published advice, actual practice, problematic issues

In this paper, we describe the initial research and results of a project designed to investigate the literature and practice of oral presentations in international contexts, where the language of delivery is English and the presenters or members of the audience include nonnative speakers. Advice from books and journal articles on oral presentations, published in English or Japanese, was gathered and compared, and then contrasted with observations made on actual presentations by computer science faculty. The research revealed where similarities and differences exist among the publications, as well as where similarities and differences exist when compared to actual practice. General guidelines for making successful oral presentations were generated, along with a list of problematic issues, which require further investigation.

Products, processes and practitioners: A critical look at the importance of specificity in ESP

Many English for Specific Purposes (ESP) researchers have argued that ESP practitioners should be sufficiently familiar with the specialist discipline of their target learners that they are able to understand its culture, community, and discourse practices. This view has led to the misconception that ESP practitioners must be experts in the target discipline or at least know the subject material as well as the learners. In this paper, I will argue the opposite view: that ESP practitioners do not need to be specialists. In a rapidly changing and evolving world, the traditional product-oriented knowledge taught to target learners in an ESP course is likely to quickly change or even become obsolete in only a few years. On the other hand, process-oriented skills, such as the ability to acquire new knowledge through observing, recording, and analyzing texts, are likely to be more stable and highly valued over the long term. These are the exact same skills that ESP practitioners themselves apply when attempting to understand the target language. Consequently, I will argue that non-specialist ESP practitioners are in the best position to help learners achieve these longer-term ESP goals.

A novel, web-based, parallel concordancer for use in the ESL/EFL classroom

To date, the use of parallel concordancers in the classroom has been a largely unexplored area. As a result, there are few guidelines on the design of these tools or the functions they should offer. Also, the number of fully-developed parallel concordance tools is surprisingly few, and most of these are designed for use by corpus linguists and translators. In this paper, we describe a novel, web-based, parallel concordancer designed specifically for use by beginner-level second and foreign language learners of English. The software is built using standard web application tools, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, and thus can run in most university server environments. It is also designed on a similar architecture to the Google search engine, allowing it to work comfortably on very large corpora of hundreds of millions of words. To enable the smooth processing of both English and non-English texts, the concordancer is built to Unicode standards. Its internal token definition settings also employ Unicode character classes meaning that no cumbersome user-defined settings are necessary. Preliminary results show that the new software is considerably faster and easier to use than standard desktop parallel concordance programs. Also, because the tool is web-based, it can be accessed outside of class time, thus allowing students more time for hypothesis-verification and production activities.

An inductive learning method for medical diagnosis

In most learning models, the induction methods that are learnable have low expressive power. The learnability of such methods are proved for some concept classes by assuming that the hypothesis space of the method contains the target concept. However, in real-world practical problems the type of target concept being dealt with is almost always unknown. In medical diagnosis, where mistakes can cause fatal results, it is very important to achieve high recognition rates and the use of more expressive methods are common. However, conventional methods are weak at handling irrelevant information which often appears in medical databases. In this paper, we consider test feature classifiers recently introduced by (Lashkia and Aleshin, 2001. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. 31 (4), 643-650), and show that they meet all essential requirements to be of practical use in medical decision making, which are: ability to handle irrelevant attributes, high expressive power, high recognition ability, and ability to generate decisions by a set of rules.

Teaching Remedial Grammar through Data-Driven Learning Using AntPConc

In most Asian countries, students receive between six and eight years of compulsory English education before they enter university. Despite this massive investment in English education, many students, especially in Japan, continue to show a poor understanding of rudimentary grammar rules. In this paper we report on a unique English course designed specifically to address grammar issues at low (remedial) levels using a Data-Driven Learning (DDL) approach. Applications of DDL are becoming more widely reported, but they are generally at the intermediate or advanced level. One of the challenges of using DDL at the remedial level is the lack of suitably leveled corpora. Another challenge is that most corpus tools used in DDL are designed for researchers or advanced learners and thus can appear overly complex. To address these issues, we have developed a simple English corpus built from standard school texts. We have also created a freeware, parallel corpus tool, AntPConc, that is specially designed to be simple, easy, and intuitive to use by beginner learners. Results from the course show significant gains between pre- and post-tests of grammar understanding for beginner-level EFL university students. We also obtained positive student feedback on the AntPConc software.