Evaluating Prompting Strategies for Grammatical Error Correction Based on Language Proficiency

Min Zeng, Jiexin Kuang, Mengyang Qiu, Jayoung Song, Jungyeul Park


Abstract
This paper proposes an analysis of prompting strategies for grammatical error correction (GEC) with selected large language models (LLM) based on language proficiency. GEC using generative LLMs has been known for overcorrection where results obtain higher recall measures than precision measures. The writing examples of English language learners may be different from those of native speakers. Given that there is a significant differences in second language (L2) learners’ error types by their proficiency levels, this paper attempts to reduce overcorrection by examining the interaction between LLM’s performance and L2 language proficiency. Our method focuses on zero-shot and few-shot prompting and fine-tuning models for GEC for learners of English as a foreign language based on the different proficiency. We investigate GEC results and find that overcorrection happens primarily in advanced language learners’ writing (proficiency C) rather than proficiency A (a beginner level) and proficiency B (an intermediate level). Fine-tuned LLMs, and even few-shot prompting with writing examples of English learners, actually tend to exhibit decreased recall measures. To make our claim concrete, we conduct a comprehensive examination of GEC outcomes and their evaluation results based on language proficiency.
Anthology ID:
2024.lrec-main.569
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)
Month:
May
Year:
2024
Address:
Torino, Italia
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, Nianwen Xue
Venues:
LREC | COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA and ICCL
Note:
Pages:
6426–6430
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.569
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Min Zeng, Jiexin Kuang, Mengyang Qiu, Jayoung Song, and Jungyeul Park. 2024. Evaluating Prompting Strategies for Grammatical Error Correction Based on Language Proficiency. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 6426–6430, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
Cite (Informal):
Evaluating Prompting Strategies for Grammatical Error Correction Based on Language Proficiency (Zeng et al., LREC-COLING 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.569.pdf