Building an Intelligent Environment for Learning ... - Shodhganga

Building an Intelligent Environment for Learning Indian Language: Marathi Thesis submitted by Abhijit R. Joshi for award of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in ENGINEERING

Under the Guidance of

Dr. Sasikumar M. (Associate Director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mumbai)

SVKM’s NMIMS University (Deemed-to-be University)

MUKESH PATEL SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT & ENGINEERING VILE PARLE (W), MUMBAI – 400056. April – 2012 i

CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the work entitled ―Building an Intelligent Environment for Learning Indian Language: Marathi‖, embodies research work done by Abhijit R. Joshi under my guidance and supervision for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering of SVKM‘s NMIMS (Deemed-to-be University), Vile Parle (W), Mumbai – 400 056.

To the best of my knowledge and belief the thesis: (i)

embodies the work of the candidate himself;

(ii)

has duly been completed;

(iii) fulfils the requirements of the ordinance relating to the Ph.D. degree of the university; and (iv) is up to the standard in respect of both, the contents and language for being referred to the examiner.

Date: Place: Mumbai

Signature of Guide (Dr. Sasikumar M.)

Forwarded By

Dr. D. J. Shah Dean, MPSTME, SVKM’s NMIMS (Deemed-to-be University)

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DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis work entitled ―Building an Intelligent Environment for Learning Indian Language: Marathi‖, is my own research work carried out under the guidance and supervision of Dr. Sasikumar M., C-DAC, Navi Mumbai 400 614. I further declare that to the best of my knowledge the thesis does not contain any part of any work which has been submitted for the award of any degree either in the University or in any other University without proper citation.

Date: Place: Mumbai 400 056.

Signature of Candidate (Abhijit R. Joshi)

Forwarded By


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Thesis Approval Certificate This is to certify that the thesis entitled ―Building an Intelligent Environment for Learning Indian Language: Marathi‖ for Ph.D. in Engineering submitted to NMIMS (Deemed-to-be University), by Abhijit R. Joshi, a bonafied student of Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering, Vile Parle (W), Mumbai – 400 056 has been evaluated and recommended for the award of Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Engineering.

Signature-:

Signature-:

Name:

Name:

Guide

Examiner

Date:

Date:


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DEDICATION

I wish to dedicate my Ph. D.

To

My Beloved Mother – Asha

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been wondering many times as to why I am doing Ph. D. The thought came to my mind many times in the last six years. The reasons are various. But the reasons of doing Ph.D. always won over this negative thought process. That is the reason today I am penning down this acknowledgement to recognise and acknowledge the people who have directly or indirectly helped me in completion of my Ph. D. work. First of all, I sincerely thank the members of managing council of SVKM for giving me the opportunity to pursue my Ph. D. in its own NMIMS University. I also thank them for providing excellent infrastructure that motivates teachers like me to learn more. I sincerely thank Dr. D. J. Shah, Dean MPSTME, NMIMS University for his encouragement throughout my Ph. D. work. I also thank him for directing me to meet Dr. Sasikumar for deciding my research area and in the first meeting itself I decided to work under him. My heartfelt thanks to my guide Dr. Sasikumar who is a true guide in the sense that he has been like a lamp post throughout my Ph. D. work and always gave me the right direction when I was diverting from my objective. Many times he criticised my work but it was only for the betterment of the final outcome. I owe my deepest gratitude for the support, encouragement and valuable guidance received from him throughout my Ph. D. work and I hope he will continue the same in my future career as well. It would have been difficult to carry out this research work but for the constant support and encouragement from Dr. Hari Vasudevan, Principal, DJSCOE and Prof. Ashish C. Daptardar, Vice Principal, DJSCOE. I would like to express my gratitude towards all my students of DJSCOE, who have contributed in implementation of Marathi-Eguru with special mention to Nayan Busa, Rudri Buch, Sadaf Siddiqui, Pankhuri Agarwal, Tejaswini Buche, Sonal Sherekar, Ishan Shah, Jeemit Zaveri, Pratik Upadhye, Aditya Modi, Archit Bakliwal and Harsh Swaminarayan.

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I am indebted to all my faculty colleagues and non-teaching staff members of DJSCOE for their support extended throughout my Ph. D. work. Special thanks to experts from Marathi language, Shri. Krushna Arjunwadkar, Shri. Arun Phadke, Smt. Rama Nene, Mrs. Barve, Mrs. Leena Narkar and Mr. Sushant Devalekar for clearing my doubts in Marathi grammar I would like to thank my parents who have instilled in me the ability to dream, a dream of being a Ph. D. holder. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Archana for her constant support, patience and encouragement that has always motivated me to complete my Ph. D. work. I acknowledge the personal difficulties, my wife and my son had to go through, due to the demands and pressures of my Ph. D. work.

Abhijit R. Joshi

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ABSTRACT The use of technology in the classroom is not new. It is perhaps older than the time computer was invented. During those days, the language educators and researchers were also updated in the usage of technology in the classroom. That brought out a number of language programs/softwares. But, these softwares were unable to attract language learners and disappeared from market within few months. The emergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in late 90‘s has thrown light to educators and researchers and those who were using the technology in the classroom, towards the field of e-learning. On line or e-learning is not a buzz word now. Still these systems have not taken off as expected. This thesis discusses the various reasons why the e-learning systems have not taken off as expected. It also explores various reasons of learning languages and the current work done in the area of e-learning for Indian languages, leading us to explore the domain of language learning using e-learning approach. The thesis concentrates on developing Language Tutoring System (LTS) for an Indian language, Marathi. The Teaching learning approach and pedagogical model is based on the basic principles of first language learning, namely, repetition, intervention and relevant feedback. Constructing an e-learning system for language teaching using these principles is argued to be relevant. The thesis also explores the various challenges and issues in creating an effective e-learning environment for language learning using these principles. At the practical level, the thesis shows that the three different frameworks of prior research which are relevant in the development of the proposed LTS, such as Constructivist Learning Environment (CLE), Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL), and Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) need to be brought together to make the language tutoring systems. In the designing of LTS, the potentials of CLE, CALL and ITS are integrated. The approach proposed in the thesis has to be practical in an e-learning setting. The overall teaching learning process is focused on teaching sentence. In sentence teaching, the variants of sentence are shown to make learner familiar with the

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structure of sentences and inflection role played by various constituents of the sentences, if any. But, to generate the sentences that are legal and meaningful, the system needs sentence structure and grammar rules. A template based approach is followed to represent the structure of Marathi sentences. The template structure ensures that the generated sentences will be largely meaningful. The legality is ensured by capturing the domain knowledge of Marathi language and ensuring compliance during generation. Interaction and assessment are key aspects of teaching learning process. It was decided to build a scaffolding model for this purpose. The reasons of developing scaffolds and their implementation are discussed in length. To implement the approach, it was found that a framework like ITS is more suitable which separates the various aspects of the TLP, and hence the system Marathi-Eguru is structured as ITS. The last part of the thesis considers the implementation of this framework. Sample interactions are presented in order to indicate the system‘s strengths and weakness before concluding with the areas in need of further attention. It is found that the Marathi-Eguru has fulfilled its aim of providing a prototype system for learning Marathi which not only demonstrates the viability of teaching language using first language learning approach, but also offers an approach and architecture for building such systems for any language.

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