A Divergent-Style Learning Support Tool for English Learners Using a Thesaurus Diagram

This paper proposes an English learning support tool which provides users with divergent information to find the right words and expressions. In contrast to a number of software tools for English translation and composition, the proposed tool is designed to give users not only the right answer to the user’s query but also a lot of words and examples which are relevant to the query. Based on the lexical information provided by the lexical database, WordNet, the proposed tool provides users with a thesaurus diagram, in which synonym sets and relation links are presented in multiple windows to help users to choose adequate words and understand similarities and differences between words. Subjective experiments are carried out to evaluate the system.