DOCSLIB.ORG

Xiaomingbot: a Multilingual Robot News Reporter

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Xiaomingbot: a Multilingual Robot News Reporter Xiaomingbot: A Multilingual Robot News Reporter Runxin Xu1,∗ Jun Cao2, Mingxuan Wang2, Jiaze Chen2, Hao Zhou2, Ying Zeng2, Yuping Wang2 Li Chen2, Xiang Yin2, Xijin Zhang2, Songcheng Jiang2, Yuxuan Wang2, and Lei Li2y 1 School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China 2 ByteDance AI Lab, Shanghai, China [email protected] fcaojun.sh, wangmingxuan.89, chenjiaze, zhouhao.nlp, zengying.ss, wangyuping, chenli.cloud, yinxiang.stephen, zhangxijin, jiangsongcheng, wangyuxuan.11, [email protected] Abstract News News News Avatar Generation Translation Reading Animation This paper proposes the building of Xiaom- Data-To-Text Neural Machine Text-To-Speech Lip ingbot, an intelligent, multilingual and multi- Generation Translation Synthesis Syncing modal software robot equipped with four inte- Text Cross-lingual Body-cloth Summarization Voice Cloning Render gral capabilities: news generation, news trans- lation, news reading and avatar animation. Its system summarizes Chinese news that it au- Figure 1: Xiaomingbot System Architecture tomatically generates from data tables. Next, it translates the summary or the full article into multiple languages, and reads the multi- capabilities reports on sports news that only focus lingual rendition through synthesized speech. on text generation. We argue in this paper that an in- Notably, Xiaomingbot utilizes a voice cloning telligent robot reporter should acquire the following technology to synthesize the speech trained capabilities to be truly user friendly: a) it should from a real person’s voice data in one input language. The proposed system enjoys several be able to create news articles from input data; merits: it has an animated avatar, and is able to b) it should be able to read the articles with lifelike generate and read multilingual news. Since it character animation like in TV broadcasting; and was put into practice, Xiaomingbot has written c) it should be multi-lingual to serve global users. over 600,000 articles, and gained over 150,000 None of the existing robot reporters are able dis- followers on social media platforms. play performance on these tasks that matches that of a human reporter. In this paper, we present Xi- 1 Introduction aomingbot, a robot news reporter capable of news The wake of automated news reporting as an emerg- writing, summarization, translation, reading, and ing research topic has witnessed the development visual character animation. In our knowledge, it and deployment of several robot news reporters is the first multilingual and multimodal AI news with various capabilities. Technological improve- agent. Hence, the system shows great potential for ments in modern natural language generation have large scale industrial applications. further enabled automatic news writing in certain Figure1 shows the capabilities and components areas. For example, GPT-2 is able to create fairly of the proposed Xiaomingbot system. It includes plausible stories (Radford et al., 2019). Bayesian four components: a) a news generator, b) a news generative methods have been able to create de- translator, c) a cross-lingual news reader, and d) an scriptions or advertisement slogans from structured animated avatar. The text generator takes input in- data (Miao et al., 2019; Ye et al., 2020). Summa- formation from data tables and produces articles in rization technology has been exploited to produce natural languages. Our system is targeted for news reports on sports news from human commentary area with available structure data, such as sports text (Zhang et al., 2016). games and financial events. The fully automated While very promising, most previous robot re- news generation function is able to write and pub- porters and machine writing systems have limited lish a story within mere seconds after the event took place, and is therefore much faster compared ∗ The work was done while the author was an intern at ByteDance AI Lab. with manual writing. Within a few seconds after y Corresponding author. the events, it can accomplish the writing and pub- Summary Text Summarization Machine Text-To-Speech Avatar Translation Animation Generated News Translation, Speech, Animation Figure 2: User Interface of Xiaomingbot. On the left is a piece of sports news, which is generated from a Ta- ble2Text model. On the top is the text summarization result. On the bottom right corner, Xiaomingbot produces the corresponding speech and visual effects. lishing of a story. The system also uses a pretrained model to Xiaomingbot’s neural cross lingual voice text summarization technique to create summaries reader, we’ve allowed it to learn a voice in different for users to skim through. Xiaomingbot can also languages with only a few examples c) For better translate news so that people from different coun- user experience, we also applied cross lingual vi- tries can promptly understand the general meaning sual rendering model, which generates synthesis of an article. Xiaomingbot is equipped with a cross lip syncing in consistent with the generated voice. lingual voice reader that can read the report in dif- d) Xiaomingbot has been put into practice and pro- ferent languages in the same voice. It is worth men- duced over 600; 000 articles, and gained over 150k tioning that Xiaomingbot excels at voice cloning. It followers in social media platforms. is able to learn a person’s voice from audio samples that are as short as only two hours, and maintain 2 System Architecture precise consistency in using that voice even when reading in different languages. In this work, we The Xiaomingbot system includes four components recorded 2 hours of Chinese voice data from a fe- working together in an pipeline, as shown in Fig- male speaker, and Xiaomingbot learnt to speak in ure1. The system receives input from data table English and Japanese with the same voice. Finally, containing event records, which, depending on the the animation module produces an animated car- domain, can be either a sports game with time-line toon avatar with lip and facial expression synchro- information, or a financial piece such as tracking nized to the text and voice. It also generates the stock market. The final output is an animated avatar full body with animated cloth texture. The demo reading the news article with a synthesized voice. video is available at https://www.youtube.com/ Figure2 illustrates an example of our Xiaomingbot watch?v=zNfaj_DV6-E. The home page is avail- system. First, the text generation model generates able at https://xiaomingbot.github.io. a piece of sports news. Then, as is shown on the top of the figure, the text summarization module The system has the following advantages: a) It trims the produced news into a summary, which produces timely news reports for certain areas and can be read by users who prefer a condensed ab- is multilingual. b) By employing a voice cloning stract instead of the whole news. Next, the machine translation module will translate the summary into • In-match Description. It describes most im- the language that the user specifies, as illustrated portant events in the game such as “some- on the bottom right of the figure. Relying on the one score a goal”, “someone received yellow text to speech (TTS) module, Xiaomingbot can card”. read both the summary and its translation in differ- ent languages using the same voice. Finally, the • Post-match Summary. It’s a brief summary system can visualize an animated character with of this game , while also including predictions synchronized lip motion and facial expression, as of the progress of the subsequent matches. well as lifelike body and clothing. 3.2 Text Summarization 3 News Generation For users who prefer a condensed summary of the report, Xiaomingbot can provide a short gist ver- In this section, we will first describe the automated sion using a pre-trained text summarization model. news generation module, followed by the news We choose to use the said model instead of gen- summarization component. erating the summary directly from the table data because the former can create more general content, 3.1 Data-To-Text Generation and can be employed to process manually written Our proposed Xiaomingbot is targeted for writing reports as well. There are two approaches to sum- news for domains with structured input data, such marize a text: extractive and abstractive summariza- as sports and finance. To generate reasonable text, tion. Extractive summarization trains a sentence se- several methods have been proposed(Miao et al., lection model to pick the important sentences from 2019; Sun et al., 2019; Ye et al., 2020). However, an input article, while an abstractive summarization since it is difficult to generate correct and reliable will further rephrase the sentences and explore the content through most of these methods, we employ potential for combining multiple sentences into a a template based on table2text technology to write simplified one. the articles. We trained two summarization models. One is Table1 illustrates one example of soccer game a general text summarization using a BERT-based data and its generated sentences. In the example, sequence labelling network. We use the TTNews Xiaomingbot retrieved the tabled data of a single dataset, a Chinese single document summarization sports game with time-lines and events, as well dataset for training from NLPCC 2017 and 2018 as statistics for each player’s performance. The shared tasks (Hua et al., 2017; Li and Wan, 2018). data table contains time, event type (scoring, foul, It includes 50,000 Chinese documents with human etc.), player, team name, and possible additional at- written summaries. The article is separated into a tributes. Using these tabulated data, we integrated sequence of sentences. The BERT-based summa- and normalized the key-value pair from the table. rization model output 0-1 labels for all sentences. We can also obtain processed key-value pairs such In addition, for soccer news, we trained a special as “Winning team”, “Lost team”, “Winning Score” summarization model based on the commentary- , and use template-based method to generate news to-summary technique (Zhang et al., 2016).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ethnic Migrant Media Forum 2014 | Curated Proceedings 1 FOREWORD
    Ethnic Migrant Media Forum 2014 CURATED PROCEEDINGS “Are we reaching all New Zealanders?” Exploring the Role, Benefits, Challenges & Potential of Ethnic Media in New Zealand Edited by Evangelia Papoutsaki & Elena Kolesova with Laura Stephenson Ethnic Migrant Media Forum 2014. Curated Proceedings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Ethnic Migrant Media Forum, Unitec Institute of Technology Thursday 13 November, 8.45am–5.45pm Unitec Marae, Carrington Road, Mt Albert Auckland, New Zealand The Introduction and Discussion sections were blind peer-reviewed by a minimum of two referees. The content of this publication comprises mostly the proceedings of a publicly held forum. They reflect the participants’ opinions, and their inclusion in this publication does not necessarily constitute endorsement by the editors, ePress or Unitec Institute of Technology. This publication may be cited as: Papoutsaki, E. & Kolesova, E. (Eds.) (2017). Ethnic migrant media forum 2014. Curated proceedings. Auckland, New Zealand. Retrieved from http://unitec. ac.nz/epress/ Cover design by Louise Saunders Curated proceedings design and editing by ePress Editors: Evangelia Papoutsaki and Elena Kolesova with Laura Stephenson Photographers: Munawwar Naqvi and Ching-Ting Fu Contact [email protected] www.unitec.ac.nz/epress Unitec Institute of Technology Private Bag 92025, Victoria Street West Auckland 1142 New Zealand ISBN 978-1-927214-20-6 Marcus Williams, Dean of Research and Enterprise (Unitec) opens the forum
    [Show full text]
  • QUALM; *Quoion Answeringsystems
    DOCUMENT RESUME'. ED 150 955 IR 005 492 AUTHOR Lehnert, Wendy TITLE The Process'of Question Answering. Research Report No. 88. ..t. SPONS AGENCY Advanced Research Projects Agency (DOD), Washington, D.C. _ PUB DATE May 77 CONTRACT ,N00014-75-C-1111 . ° NOTE, 293p.;- Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University 'ERRS' PRICE NF -$0.83 1C- $15.39 Plus Post'age. DESCRIPTORS .*Computer Programs; Computers; *'conceptual Schemes; *Information Processing; *Language Classification; *Models; Prpgrai Descriptions IDENTIFIERS *QUALM; *QuOion AnsweringSystems . \ ABSTRACT / The cOmputationAl model of question answering proposed by a.lamputer program,,QUALM, is a theory of conceptual information processing based 'bon models of, human memory organization. It has been developed from the perspective of' natural language processing in conjunction with story understanding systems. The p,ocesses in QUALM are divided into four phases:(1) conceptual categorization; (2) inferential analysis;(3) content specification; and (4) 'retrieval heuristict. QUALM providea concrete criterion for judging the strengths and weaknesses'of store representations.As a theoretical model, QUALM is intended to describ general question answerinlg, where question antiering is viewed as aerbal communicb.tion. device betieen people.(Author/KP) A. 1 *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied'by EDRS are the best that can be made' * from. the original document. ********f******************************************,******************* 1, This work-was
    [Show full text]
  • The Politics of Presence: Political Representation and New Zealand’S Asian Members of Parliament
    THE POLITICS OF PRESENCE: POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND NEW ZEALAND’S ASIAN MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT By Seonah Choi A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science at Victoria University of Wellington 2014 2 Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... 4 List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... 5 Definitions ............................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter I: Introduction .......................................................................................................... 8 Chapter II: Literature Review .............................................................................................. 11 2.1 Representative Democracy ........................................................................................ 11 2.2 Theories of Political Representation .......................................................................... 12 2.3 Theories of Minority Representation ......................................................................... 27 2.4 Formulating a Framework ........................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Pacifica Military History Sample Chapters 1
    Pacifica Military History Sample Chapters 1 WELCOME TO Pacifica Military History FREE SAMPLE CHAPTERS *** The 28 sample chapters in this free document are drawn from books written or co-written by noted military historian Eric Hammel. All of the books are featured on the Pacifca Military History website http://www.PacificaMilitary.com where the books are for sale direct to the public. Each sample chapter in this file is preceded by a line or two of information about the book's current status and availability. Most are available in print and all the books represented in this collection are available in Kindle editions. Eric Hammel has also written and compiled a number of chilling combat pictorials, which are not featured here due to space restrictions. For more information and links to the pictorials, please visit his personal website, Eric Hammel’s Books. All of Eric Hammel's books that are currently available can be found at http://www.EricHammelBooks.com with direct links to Amazon.com purchase options, This html document comes in its own executable (exe) file. You may keep it as long as you like, but you may not print or copy its contents. You may, however, pass copies of the original exe file along to as many people as you want, and they may pass it along too. The sample chapters in this free document are all available for free viewing at Eric Hammel's Books. *** Copyright © 2009 by Eric Hammel All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
    [Show full text]
  • Scouting, Signaling, and Gatekeeping: Chinese Naval Operations in Japanese Waters and the International Law Implications
    U.S. Naval War College U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons CMSI Red Books China Maritime Studies Institute 2-2009 Scouting, Signaling, and Gatekeeping: Chinese Naval Operations in Japanese Waters and the International Law Implications Peter A. Dutton Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-red-books Recommended Citation Dutton, Peter, "Scouting, Signaling, and Gatekeeping: Chinese Naval Operations in Japanese Waters and the International Law Implications" (2009). CMSI Red Books, Study No. 2. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the China Maritime Studies Institute at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in CMSI Red Books by an authorized administrator of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE CHINA MARITIME STUDIES Number 2 Scouting, Signaling, and Gatekeeping Chinese Naval Operations in Japanese Waters and the International Law Implications ISBN: 978-1-884733-60-4 Peter Dutton 9 781884 733604 Scouting, Signaling, and Gatekeeping Chinese Naval Operations in Japanese Waters and the International Law Implications Peter Dutton CHINA MARITIME STUDIES INSTITUTE U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND www.usnwc.edu/cnws/cmsi/default.aspx Naval War College The China Maritime Studies are extended research projects Newport, Rhode Island that the editor, the Dean of Naval Warfare Studies, and the Center for Naval Warfare Studies President of the Naval War College consider of particular China Maritime Study No. 2 interest to policy makers, scholars, and analysts. February 2009 Correspondence concerning the China Maritime Studies may be addressed to the director of the China Maritime President, Naval War College Studies Institute, www.usnwc.edu/cnws/cmsi/default.aspx.
    [Show full text]
  • 2018 RBA Annual Report
    2 018 RADIO BROADCASTERS ASSOCIATION ANNUAL REPORT www.rba.co.nz THE YEAR BY NUMBERS NUMBER OF PEOPLE EMPLOYED BY RBA COMMERCIAL STATIONS – IN THE REGION OF 1,800 ANNUAL RADIO REVENUE $ 279.4 MILLION % OF ALL NZ ADVERTISING REVENUE 10.63% # OF COMMERCIAL RADIO FREQUENCIES– 103 AM & 678 FM 781 # OF LISTENERS AGED 10+ TO ALL RADIO AS AT S4 DECEMBER 2018 84% OF ALL NEW ZEALANDERS* 3.59 MILLION # OF LISTENERS AGED 10+ TO COMMERCIAL RADIO AS AT S4 DECEMBER 2018 78% OF ALL NEW ZEALANDERS* 3.32 MILLION # OF RADIO STUDENTS IN 2018 With almost 3.6 million people listening to radio each week and 3.3 million of those listening to commercial radio, we are one 173 of, if not the most used media channels every week in New Zealand. We need to shout this loudly and proudly. Jana Rangooni, RBA CEO www.rba.co.nz FROM THE RBA CHAIRMAN, FROM THE RBA CEO, NORM COLLISON JANA RANGOONI 2018 was a challenging As I write our support of a thriving mainstream year for all organisations in this report music industry in New Zealand. the media throughout New I, like so • We have revised the radio agency Zealand as we faced more many in the accreditation scheme and increased competition at a global level. industry, the number of agencies participating. It was pleasing therefore to are still see radio yet again hold its grieving • We have developed a new plan own in terms of audiences the loss with Civil Defence to engage with and advertising revenue. of our the 16 CDEM regions to ensure the Memorandum of Understanding with We ended the year with over 3.3 million New Zealanders colleague Darryl Paton who so many MCDEM is activated across New listening to commercial radio each week and $279.4 million in know from his years at The Edge and The Zealand.
    [Show full text]
  • THE PACIFIC-ASIAN LOG January 2019 Introduction Copyright Notice Copyright  2001-2019 by Bruce Portzer
    THE PACIFIC-ASIAN LOG January 2019 Introduction Copyright Notice Copyright 2001-2019 by Bruce Portzer. All rights reserved. This log may First issued in August 2001, The PAL lists all known medium wave not reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part in any form, except with broadcasting stations in southern and eastern Asia and the Pacific. It the expressed permission of the author. Contents may be used freely in covers an area extending as far west as Afghanistan and as far east as non-commercial publications and for personal use. Some of the material in Alaska, or roughly one half of the earth's surface! It now lists over 4000 this log was obtained from copyrighted sources and may require special stations in 60 countries, with frequencies, call signs, locations, power, clearance for anything other than personal use. networks, schedules, languages, formats, networks and other information. The log also includes longwave broadcasters, as well as medium wave beacons and weather stations in the region. Acknowledgements Since early 2005, there have been two versions of the Log: a downloadable pdf version and an interactive on-line version. My sources of information include DX publications, DX Clubs, E-bulletins, e- mail groups, web sites, and reports from individuals. Major online sources The pdf version is updated a few a year and is available at no cost. There include Arctic Radio Club, Australian Radio DX Club (ARDXC), British DX are two listings in the log, one sorted by frequency and the other by country. Club (BDXC), various Facebook pages, Global Tuners and KiwiSDR receivers, Hard Core DXing (HCDX), International Radio Club of America The on-line version is updated more often and allows the user to search by (IRCA), Medium Wave Circle (MWC), mediumwave.info (Ydun Ritz), New frequency, country, location, or station.
    [Show full text]
  • 1-U3753-WHS-Prog-Channel-FIBE
    CHANNEL LISTING FIBE TV CURRENT AS OF JANUARY 15, 2015. $ 95/MO.1 CTV NEWS CHANNEL.............................501 NBC HD ........................................................ 1220 TSN1 ................................................................ 400 IN A BUNDLE CTV NEWS CHANNEL HD ..................1501 NTV - ST. JOHN’S ......................................212 TSN1 HD .......................................................1400 GOOD FROM 41 CTV TWO ......................................................202 O TSN RADIO 1050 .......................................977 A CTV TWO HD ............................................ 1202 OMNI.1 - TORONTO ................................206 TSN RADIO 1290 WINNIPEG ..............979 ABC - EAST ................................................... 221 E OMNI.1 HD - TORONTO ......................1206 TSN RADIO 990 MONTREAL ............ 980 ABC HD - EAST ..........................................1221 E! .........................................................................621 OMNI.2 - TORONTO ............................... 207 TSN3 ........................................................ VARIES ABORIGINAL VOICES RADIO ............946 E! HD ................................................................1621 OMNI.2 HD - TORONTO ......................1207 TSN3 HD ................................................ VARIES AMI-AUDIO ....................................................49 ÉSPACE MUSIQUE ................................... 975 ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE TSN4 .......................................................
    [Show full text]
  • No. 20-1514 Washington, D.C. 20554 (202) 418-1740
    NOT YET SCHEDULED FOR ORAL ARGUMENT USCA Case #20-1514 Document #1902148 Filed: 06/11/2021 Page 1 of 50 BRIEF FOR APPELLEE IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT NO. 20-1514 CHINESE VOICE OF GOLDEN CITY, APPELLANT, V. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, APPELLEE, SILVER STATE BROADCASTING, LLC, INTERVENOR. ON APPEAL OF AN ORDER OF THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION P. MICHELE ELLISON ACTING GENERAL COUNSEL JACOB M. LEWIS ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL PAMELA L. SMITH COUNSEL FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D.C. 20554 (202) 418-1740 USCA Case #20-1514 Document #1902148 Filed: 06/11/2021 Page 2 of 50 CERTIFICATE AS TO PARTIES, RULINGS, AND RELATED CASES 1. Parties. The appellant is Chinese Voice of Golden City.1 The appellee is the Federal Communications Commission. The intervenor is Silver State Broadcasting, LLC. 2. Rulings under review. Chinese Voice of Golden City DKQLS-LP, Las Vegas, Nevada, Memorandum Opinion and Order, 35 FCC Rcd 13638 (2020) (J.A. 203). 3. Related cases. The order on review has not previously been before this Court. Counsel is not aware of any related cases that are pending before this Court or any other court. 1 Chinese Voice initiated this proceeding by filing a document titled “Petition for Review.” That document is properly deemed a “Notice of Appeal” because, by its terms, it seeks review “[p]ursuant to 47 U.S.C. § 402(b).” Petition for Review at 1. Section 402(b) provides that “[a]ppeals” may be taken to this Court from Commission orders in specified licensing cases.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Article
    Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 284 2nd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2018) Study on the Way of Telling the Chinese Story to the Outside World by TV Documentaries in the New Era Taking the Third Season of "Tales from Modern China" as an Example Juncheng Wang Qi Guo Macao University of Science and Technology Propaganda Department of Party Committee Macao, China Renmin University of China Beijing, China Abstract—How to talk about the Chinese story to the outside cultural communication by contemporary records, world is how to improve the external communication effect of the documentary works will be groped for. Chinese story and grasp the impact of overseas markets, politics and the overall environment on this issue. As an important II. THE CONNOTATION OF CHINESE STORY medium for carrying Chinese stories, the TV documentary, in In the National Propaganda and Ideological Work recent years, with the launch of the “Belt and Road Initiative” Conference held on August 19, 2013, General Secretary Xi initiative and the deepening of international cooperation, has Jinping pointed out that our country should conscientiously do obtained certain achievements in the breakthrough of overseas markets, but the overall communication effect is still insufficient. a good job in external propaganda work, accelerate the The reason for this phenomenon lies in the misunderstanding of innovation of external propaganda methods to tell the Chinese the overseas audience on the image of China. In other words, to story well, spread the Chinese voice well, and interpret the tell the Chinese story well through the TV documentary, the core Chinese characteristics.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dissemination and Localization of Anime in China: Case Study on the Chinese Mobile Video Game Onmyoji
    The dissemination and localization of anime in China: Case study on the Chinese mobile video game Onmyoji Wuqian Qian The Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies Master Program in Asian Studies, 120 hp Autumn term 2016 Supervisor: Jaqueline Berndt English title: Professor Abstract In the 2017 Chinese Gaming Industry Report, a new type of video games called 二次 元 game is noted as a growing force in the game industry. Onmyoji is one of those games produced by Netease and highly popular with over 200 million registered players in China alone. 二次元 games are characterized by Japanese-language dubbing and anime style in character design. However, Onmyoji uses also Japanese folklore, which raises two questions: one is why Netease chose to make such a 二次元 game, the other why a Chinese game using Japanese folklore is so popular among Chinese players. The attractiveness of an exotic culture may help to explain the latter, but it does not work for the first. Thus, this thesis implements a media studies perspective in order to substantiate its hypothesis that it is the dissemination of anime in China that has made Onmyoji possible and successful. Unlike critics who regard anime as an imported product from Japan which is different from domestic Chinese animation and impairs its development, this study pays attention to the interrelation between media platforms and viewer (or user) demographics, and it explores the positive influence of Japanese anime on the Chinese creative industry, implying the feasibility of anime or 二次元 products to be created in other countries than Japan.
    [Show full text]
  • How Definite Are We About the English Article System? Chinese Learners, L1 Interference and the Teaching of Articles in English for Academic Purposes Programmes
    HOW DEFINITE ARE WE ABOUT THE ENGLISH ARTICLE SYSTEM? CHINESE LEARNERS, L1 INTERFERENCE AND THE TEACHING OF ARTICLES IN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES PROGRAMMES. By RICHARD NICKALLS A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham December 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT Omission and overspecification of the/a/an/Ø are among the most frequently occurring grammatical errors made in English academic writing by Chinese first language (L1) university students (Chuang & Nesi, 2006; Lee & Chen, 2009). However, in the context of competing demands in the English for academic purposes (EAP) syllabus and conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of error correction, EAP tutors are often unsure about whether article use should or could be a focus and whether such errors should be corrected or ignored. With the aim of informing pedagogy, this study investigates: whether explicit teaching or correction improves accuracy; which article uses present the most challenges for Chinese students; the causes of error and whether a focus on article form can be integrated within a modern genre based/student centred approach in EAP.
    [Show full text]