System and method for advancement of vocabulary skills and for identifying subject matter of a document

• US 8,311,808 B2
• Filed: 12/15/2009
• Issued: 11/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/15/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thinkmap Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Thinkmap Incorporated
• Inventors: Tinkler, Marc
• Primary Examiner(s): PULLIAS, JESSE SCOTT
• Application Number:
  US12/638,733
• Publication Number:
  US 20110144978A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,064 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 704/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/216 using statistical methods

Abstract

A system and method for providing vocabulary information includes one or more computer processors that, for each of a plurality of words of a text, determine a relevance of the word to the text, and, for each of at least a subset of the plurality of words, output an indication of the respective determined relevance of the word to the text, where, for each of the plurality of words, the determination includes comparing a frequency of the word in the text to a frequency threshold.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for at least one of updating and using a data store of words associated with subject matter categories, comprising:

comparing, by a computer processor, words of a received document to words of a data store that are tagged with respective indications of subject matter categories to which the words of the data store belong;

for each word of the received document that does not match any of the tagged words of the data store, determining, in a first determining step and by the processor, whether a frequency of the word in the received document meets a frequency threshold; and

for each word for which it is determined in the first determining step that the frequency of the word meets the frequency threshold;

tagging the word, by the processor, as belonging to a subject matter category with which the received document is associated; and

updating the data store, by the processor, to include the word with its tag.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the subject matter categories are of a subject matter category hierarchy that includes a plurality of subject matter categories; and

the method further comprises;

for each of a plurality of words of a text, determining, in a second determining step and by the at least one computer processor, at least one of the plurality of subject matter categories to which the word belongs;

receiving user input of a hierarchy level selection; and

for each of at least a subset of the plurality of words, outputting, by the at least one computer processor and based on the user input, an indication of those of the respective at least one subject matter category that are at a hierarchical level at least as high as the selected hierarchy level and to which the respective word has been determined to belong in the second determining step.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the second determining step is performed by matching the respective word to a tagged word of the data store.