Predicting the Difficulty of Language Proficiency Tests

Lisa Beinborn, Torsten Zesch, Iryna Gurevych


Abstract
Language proficiency tests are used to evaluate and compare the progress of language learners. We present an approach for automatic difficulty prediction of C-tests that performs on par with human experts. On the basis of detailed analysis of newly collected data, we develop a model for C-test difficulty introducing four dimensions: solution difficulty, candidate ambiguity, inter-gap dependency, and paragraph difficulty. We show that cues from all four dimensions contribute to C-test difficulty.
Anthology ID:
Q14-1040
Volume:
Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Volume 2
Month:
Year:
2014
Address:
Cambridge, MA
Editors:
Dekang Lin, Michael Collins, Lillian Lee
Venue:
TACL
SIG:
Publisher:
MIT Press
Note:
Pages:
517–530
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/Q14-1040
DOI:
10.1162/tacl_a_00200
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Lisa Beinborn, Torsten Zesch, and Iryna Gurevych. 2014. Predicting the Difficulty of Language Proficiency Tests. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2:517–530.
Cite (Informal):
Predicting the Difficulty of Language Proficiency Tests (Beinborn et al., TACL 2014)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nschneid-patch-4/Q14-1040.pdf