The automated text adaptation tool

Abstract

Text adaptation is a teacher practice used to help with reading comprehension and English language skills development for English language learners (ELLs) (Carlo, August, McLaughlin, Snow, Dressler, Lippman, Lively, & White, 2004; Echevarria, Vogt and Short, 2004; Yano, Long and Ross, 1994). The practice of text adaptation involves a teacher's modification of texts to make them more understandable, given a student's reading level. Teacher adaptations include text summaries, vocabulary support (e.g., providing synonyms), and translation. It is a time-consuming, but critical practice for K-12 teachers who teach ELLs, since reading-level appropriate texts are often hard to find. To this end, we have implemented the Automated Text Adaptation Tool v. 1.0 (ATA v. 1.0): an innovative, educational tool that automatically generates text adaptations similar to those teachers might create. We have also completed a teacher pilot study. Schwarm and Ostendorf (2005), and Heilman, Collins-Thompson, Callan, and Eskenazi (2006) describe related research addressing the development of NLP-based reading support tools.