<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:SimSun;
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
@font-face
{font-family:SimSun;
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@SimSun";
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:windowtext;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
@page WordSection1
{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;
margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:13.0pt'>Shared Task: Grammatical Error Correction<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>CoNLL 2013 will continue the CoNLL tradition of having a high profile<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>shared task in natural language processing. This year's shared task<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>will be grammatical error correction. A participating system in this<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>shared task is given short English texts written by non-native<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>speakers of English. The system detects the grammatical errors present<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>in the input texts, and returns the corrected texts.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This task has gained popularity recently with the organization of the<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>HOO (Helping Our Own) shared tasks in 2011 and 2012. In the most<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>recent HOO shared task in 2012, on error detection and correction of<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>determiners and prepositions, 14 teams from around the world<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>participated and 85 systems were submitted to the shared task.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The grammatical error correction task is impactful since it is<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>estimated that hundreds of millions of people in the world are<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>learning English and they benefit directly from an automated grammar<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>checker. However, for many error types, current grammatical error<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>correction methods do not achieve a high performance and thus more<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>research is needed.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Instead of focusing on only determiner and preposition errors as in<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>HOO 2012, the CoNLL 2013 shared task will include a more comprehensive<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>list of error types, including determiner, preposition, noun number,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>verb form, agreement, spelling, and punctuation errors. Extending into<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>more error types introduces the possibility of correcting multiple<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>interacting errors. Examples of such interacting errors include<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>determiner and noun number ('that cars' -> 'that car' or 'those cars')<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>and preposition and verb form ('an interest to study’ -> 'an interest<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>in studying').<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Participating teams will be provided with common training data in<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>which grammatical errors have been annotated. Blind test data will be<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>used to evaluate the outputs of the participating teams using a common<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>scoring software and evaluation metric.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The shared task home page is accessible at:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~nlp/conll13st.html">http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~nlp/conll13st.html</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><b>Registration (NEW)<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Registration for the shared task has begun. Please email the following<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>information to conll13st@gmail.com: name, email address, and<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>affiliation of the members of a participating team, with one team<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>member designated as the contact person. Upon registration, each<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>participating team will receive the training data and scorer and join<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>a discussion group for the shared task. A signed license agreement is<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>needed for receipt of the training data. A team can register at<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>anytime before the registration deadline, but early registration is<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>highly encouraged, since details of the shared task will be announced<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>on the discussion group.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><b>Important Dates<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>December 17, 2012: announcement of shared task<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>January 17, 2013: set up of shared task website<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>February 5, 2013: registration begins and release of training set and scorer<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>March 5, 2013: registration deadline<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>April 28, 2013: test set available<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>May 1, 2013: systems' outputs collected <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>May 8, 2013: system results due to participants<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>May 15, 2013: shared task system papers due<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>May 24, 2013: reviews due<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>May 27, 2013: notification of acceptance <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>June 3, 2013: camera ready version of shared task system papers due<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>August 8-9, 2013: CoNLL 2013 conference<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><b>Shared Task Organizers<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Hwee Tou Ng (Chair), National University of Singapore<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Joel Tetreault, Nuance Communications<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Siew Mei Wu, National University of Singapore<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Yuanbin Wu, National University of Singapore<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Christian Hadiwinoto, National University of Singapore<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><b>Contact<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Questions about the CoNLL 2013 shared task can be sent to <a href="mailto:conll13st@gmail.com">conll13st@gmail.com</a>.<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>