Lecture 2: Introduction to the Essay Assignment

Semantic Analysis in Language Technology
Lecture 2: Introduction to the Essay Assignment
Course Website: http://stp.lingfil.uu.se/~santinim/sais/sais_fall2013.htm

MARINA SANTINI
PROGRAM: COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY

DEPT OF LINGUISTICS AND PHILOLOGY

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN

14 NOV 2013

Acknowledgements
 Thanks to Mats Dahllöf for the many slides I

borrowed from his previous course.


Essay Assignment
 Work alone or in groups of two students
 Essay length: 5-6 pages for 1 student: 9-12 pages for

2 students
 Oral presentation: 10 minutes for 1 student; 20 min

for 2 students; 5-7 minutes for questions and
discussion


Essay Assignment: Deadlines
1.

Submission first version: 5 Dec 2013

2.

Oral presentation: 12 Dec 2013

3.

Feedback on another group’s work: 17 Dec 2013
1.
2.
3.
4.

4.

Links to the essays will be published on the course website;
Each student must choose one essay submitted by another group and
write a 1 page essay review;
Send one copy of your essay review to me and one copy to the group
members;
Each group must take the reviewers’ feedback into account for the
final essay submission.

Essay final version and final submission: 20 Jan 2013


The purpose of the Essay Assignment
 Training in ”critical thinking”

 Training in writing and reviewing

academic texts

 Independent study of a system, an

approach or a problem withing
semantic-oriented language tecnology

 Oral and witten presentation
 Review procedure

Essay Topics
 Hands-on testing and description of a

system:


see demos and systems listed in the course website.

 Proposal, discussion and motivation of a

future semantic-oriented application –
unleash your imagination -- that could solve
a real-word problem (similar, for ex, to the
use case on cross-linguality we discussed
last time);

 Literature study on an approach or an issue

in a semantic-related area. Think of it as a
review article that you want to publish.

 Testing of online demos may be included.


The topic sentence (Björk and Wickborg, 1981)
 A paragraph is a thought unit. It consists of a series of sentences

unified by ONE controlling idea or topic, which is usually expressed
in a topic sentence.

 When you plan a paragraph the main thing is to have one central

topic clearly in mind.

 State your the basic topic early in the paragraph.
 Once you have established your controlling topic or idea you must

let it control the whole paragraph. Delete any sentence in the
paragraph that is not related to the main idea.

 Text coherence and cohesion can be controlled by an expert use of

topic sentences and well-structured paragraphs.


Who is your audience?
 Any piece of academic writing should be structured

with reference to a clearly stated aim in a way that is
easy for the reader to understand.


Critical Evaluation
 The essay (as most academic texts) should present a critical evaluation of

some claim.

 Critical evaluation means assessing the relative merit of a piece of work,

such as an implemented system, a more general method, or the “state-ofthe-art” in some field.

 “Critical” (as in “critical thinking”) means that evidence is evaluated with

the aim of reaching a conclusion about what to think or do.

 “Critical” in this sense does not mean being “negative” or “disapproving”

about something. That is rather a secondary more informal – but very
common – sense of the word. Critical evaluation may lead to the conclusion
that something is perfect as well as that it is worthless.




Perfection: We prove that an algorithm solves the problem it is presented as solving.
Worthless: We show that a certain NLP method makes performance worse for a wide variety
of data.


Critical Evaluation: Examples
 We compute metrics showing different changes in

performance for different data using different NLP
methods for solving a certain problem.

 We also consider computational and economic costs

of using these methods in a more general evaluation
of their value.

Basically, everthing must be interpreted, measured,
and assessed on the positive side and on the negative
side!

Oral Presentation
 Highlight the important points. What is the main

message to convey?
 Be realistic about the amount of information the
audience can process – Think of yourselves and your
attention span.
 Use a visual presentation program in a way that
supports the presentation. Slides are highly
recommended.
 Make sure you reach a proper ending. (Prepare your
talk in such a way that some sections may be cut.)
Rehearse.

References, Citations and Quotations
 In academic writing you should give citations for each

work you use in your own writing. These works should be
listed in the References section. Exactly the ones cited!

 When you use the methods, concepts, conclusions of

other people – using your own words – plain citation.

 When you use the words of other people – quotation

(citat) should be marked as such.

 Handle all these things in a strict way according to some

typical standard (e.g. IEEE citation standards)!


Cf. Also the Thesis Structure
(self-reading)
 Content structure of a thesis
 Aim
 Background
 Main body and conclusions
 Abstract


Content Structure of a Thesis


Aim


Background


Main Body and Conclusions


Abstract


Suggested Readings
 Academic writing:
 Features of academic writing
 Academic writing conventions
 etc.
 How to write an essay:
 Easy steps
 General guidelines
 etc.
 Peer-to-peer evaluation:
 "Do's" and "Don't's”
 Steps

This is the end… Thanks for your attention !


Lecture 2: Introduction to the Essay Assignment

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