Natural Language Understanding Considerations for a Lifelong Learning Companion

In this paper, we present considerations for natural language processing for a lifelong learning companion. In the context of these considerations, we review related work in automated assessment of learner writing and present an idea for augmenting keyword spotting with syntactic information. However, the extra information given by syntax is offset by parser errors and added burden on the author. The results suggest that while standard keyword spotting is a quick approach to adding NLU capabilities it has inherent limitations.