Lowe, Stefanie Ann
(1994)
The production of anaphoric reference in the written narratives of seven-year-old children: Analyzing the requirements for a computational teaching system based on a psycholinguistic model.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis brings together one aspect of language development, the production of anaphoric pronouns in the written narratives of seven-year-old children, with the design of technology appropriate for teaching using whole texts, and pedagogical goals involved in teaching mother-tongue language. A five-stage methodology is proposed for analyzing the requirements for designing a Mother Tongue Language Teaching System (MTLTS) and is used to generate an informal specification of requirements for a prototype system called PROTEUS. PROTEUS is a system for teaching seven-year-old children about the production of pronouns in written narratives. The analysis of requirements includes five stages beginning with the proposal of an adult model of pronoun production having a 'process' orientation. Experimental work is described in which written narratives were elicited and analyzed for the purpose of modelling pronoun production relative to the adult model. A psycholinguistic model of the production of anaphoric reference in the written narratives of seven-year-old children identifies heuristic production strategies which represent a gradual simplification of behavior. These strategies are found to be implemented within local units of text, and range from pronominalization of the only character a local unit of text is about, (by default, pronominalization in clause-initial position), to the emergence of a full-blown position conservation strategy. Children are also found to produce 'pronominal confusion' when they referred to interacting characters in less constrained environments; or, they avoided the use of pronominals altogether. A statement of pedagogical goals for PROTEUS is set out, followed by a review of manual and computational methods for teaching language. Finally, it is concluded that an electronic text should be used to teach about pronominalization, and a system model for PROTEUS, which could be mapped to a system implementation, is proposed.
Actions (login required)
 |
Record administration - authorised staff only |
Download statistics
Download statistics