A Case-Based Approach for Developing Writing Tools
Aimed at Non-native English Users

Sandra M. Alusio1 and Osvaldo N. Oliveira Jr.2


1 Universidade de So Paulo
Departamento de Cincias de Computao e Estatstica
CP 668, 13560-970, So Carlos, SP, BRAZIL
e-mail:sandra@icmsc.sc.usp.br
2 Universidade de So Paulo
Instituto de Fsica de So Carlos
CP 369, 13560-970 So Carlos, SP, BRAZIL
e-mail:chu@ifqsc.sc.usp.br



Abstract

	A writing tool has been developed for helping non-native English users to produce
a first draft of Introductory Sections of scientific papers. A corpus analysis was carried
out in 54 papers of Experimental Physics which allowed one to identify the schematic
structure of Introductions and 30 rhetorical strategies generally employed. Each one of
the Introductions analysed constituted a case. The user chooses from menus features
related to the rhetorical strategies for each component and gives the intended order for
his/her Introduction, thus forming the requisition. Using three types of metric, the tool
recovers the best-match cases that can be later modified in a revision process.
Preliminary experiments showed that high precision and recall will only be obtained if
the number of cases in the case base is considerably increased. In the revision process,
four operations are suggested which consist in modifying/adding/deleting the different
rhetorical messages that constitute the strategies of the chosen case.
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