Automated Text Error Correction (TEC) Task

An Automated Text Error Correction (TEC) Task is an automated language correction task that corrects text errors.

• AKA: Machine-Performed Text Error Detection and Correction.
• Context:
  • It can be solved by a Text Error Correction System (that implements a text error correction algorithm).
  • It can be supported by a Text Error Detection Task.
  • It can range from being an English TEC Task, Chinese TEC Task, ...
  • It can range from being a Character-Level TEC Task to being a Word-Level TEC Task.
  • It can be cast as a Syntactic String Error Correction Task.'
  • It can involve the use of a Sentence Noise-Adding System.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • an Orthographic Typographic Error Correction Task, that is limited to orthographic errors, such as: misspelling correction.
    • OrthEC(“Weres th eeror?”) ⇒ “Where's the error?”.
    • OrthEC(“iliked yester days weaather.”) ⇒ “I liked yesterday's weaather.”.
    • OrthEC(“I visitted Tokyo on Nov 2003.:)”) ⇒ “I visitted Tokyo on Nov 2003.:)”.
    • OrthEC(“Kan yu reed dis massage despiet thehorible sppelingm sitakes?”) ⇒ “Can you read this message despite the horrible sppelling mistakes?”.
    • …
  • a Grammatical Error Correction Task, that is limited to grammatical errors, such as: verb form error.
    • GEC(“ilike yester days weaather.”) ⇒ “Iliked yesterdays weaather.”.
    • …
  • a CoNLL-2014 Error Correction Shared Task.
  • a GM-RKB Error Correction Task.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Pronunciation Error Correction Task.
  • a Automated Text Error Generation Task.
  • an Annotated Text Error Correction Task, such as HTML Error Correction or WikiText error correction (for wikitext errors).
  • an Automated Text Generation Task.
  • a Software Code Syntax Error Correction Task for software code errors.
  • a Genome Error Correction Task for genome errors.
  • a Paraphrasing Task.
• See: Text Sentence, Transcription Error.

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References

2014

• (Ng et al., 2014) ⇒ Hwee Tou Ng, Siew Mei Wu, Ted Briscoe, Christian Hadiwinoto, Raymond Hendy Susanto, and Christopher Bryant. (2014). “The CoNLL-2014 Shared Task on Grammatical Error Correction.” In: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning: Shared Task.
  • QUOTE: ... Grammatical error correction is the shared task of the Eighteenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning in 2014 (CoNLL-2014). In this task, given an English essay written by a learner of English as a second language, the goal is to detect and correct the grammatical errors of all error types present in the essay, and return the corrected essay. ...

    ... Grammatical errors consist of many different types, including articles or determiners, prepositions, noun form, verb form, subject-verb agreement, pronouns, word choice, sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization, etc. However, most prior published research on grammatical error correction only focuses on a small number of frequently occurring error types, such as article and preposition errors (Han et al., 2006; Gamon, 2010; Rozovskaya and Roth, 2010; Tetreault et al., 2010; Dahlmeier and Ng, 2011b).

Table 1: The 28 error types in the shared task.

Type	Description	Example
Vt	Verb tense	Medical technology during that time [is → was] not advanced enough to cure him.
Vm	Verb modal	Although the problem [would → may] not be serious, people [would → might] still be afraid.
V0	Missing verb	However, there are also a great number of people [who → who are] against this technology.
Vform	Verb form	A study in 2010 [shown → showed] that patients recover faster when surrounded by family members.
SVA	Subject-verb agreement	The benefits of disclosing genetic risk information [outweighs → outweigh] the costs.
ArtOrDet	Article or determiner	It is obvious to see that [internet → the internet] saves people time and also connects people globally.
Nn	Noun number	A carrier may consider not having any [child → children] after getting married.
Npos	Noun possessive	Someone should tell the [carriers → carrier’s] relatives about the genetic problem.
Pform	Pronoun form	A couple should run a few tests to see if [their → they] have any genetic diseases beforehand.
Pref	Pronoun reference	It is everyone’s duty to ensure that [he or she → they] undergo regular health checks.
Prep	Preposition	This essay will [discuss about → discuss] whether a carrier should tell his relatives or not.
Wci	Wrong collocation idiom	Early examination is [healthy → advisable] and will cast away unwanted doubts.
Wa	Acronyms	After [WOWII → World War II], the population of China decreased rapidly.
Wform	Word form	The sense of [guilty → guilt] can be more than expected.
Wtone	Tone (formal/informal)	[It’s → It is] our family and relatives that bring us up.
Srun	Run-on sentences, comma splices	The issue is highly [debatable, a → debatable. A] genetic risk could come from either side of the family.
Smod	Dangling modifiers	[Undeniable, → It is undeniable that] it becomes addictive when we spend more time socializing virtually.
Spar	Parallelism	We must pay attention to this information and [assisting → assist] those who are at risk.
Sfrag	Sentence fragment	However, from the ethical point of view.
Ssub	Subordinate clause	This is an issue [needs → that needs] to be addressed.
WOinc	Incorrect word order	[Someone having what kind of disease → What kind of disease someone has] is a matter of their own privacy.
WOadv	Incorrect adjective/ adverb order	In conclusion, [personally I → I personally] feel that it is important to tell one’s family members.
Trans	Linking words/phrases	It is sometimes hard to find [out → out if] one has this disease.
Mec	Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.	This knowledge [maybe relavant → may be relevant] to them.
Rloc−	Redundancy	It is up to the [patient’s own choice → patient] to disclose information.
Cit	Citation	Poor citation practice.
Others	Other errors	An error that does not fit into any other category but can still be corrected.
Um	Unclear meaning	Genetic disease has a close relationship with the born gene. (i.e., no correction possible without further clarification.)

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