Steven Coyne

He/him

Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

PhD Candidate at the Tohoku University NLP Lab

Research Part-time Worker at the RIKEN AIP Natural Language Understanding Team

coyne.steven@gmail.com

github.com/coynestevencharles

linkedin.com/in/steven-c-coyne

Google Scholar Profile

I am studying Natural Language Processing, particularly the intersection of NLP and education. My current research projects focus on generating constructive feedback comments on English learners' writing and on automated assessment of English learner speech. Other subfields of interest include intelligent tutoring systems, automated essay evaluation, and interactive tools for writing assistance, knowledge management, or human-AI co-creation.

Education

PhD, Natural Language Processing (in progress)
October 2024 - September 2027
Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University

Master of Science, Natural Language Processing
October 2022 - September 2024
Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University

Bachelor of Arts, Languages and Culture Studies
September 2008 - April 2012
School of Arts and Humanities, Stockton University

Experience

Research Part-time Worker
RIKEN AIP Natural Language Understanding Team
November 2022 - Present

Research on natural language processing for educational technology. My project focuses on generating targeted grammatical feedback for L2 English essay writing, and the system is used by over 2,000 students in Tohoku University's academic English classes.

Research Assistant
Center for Language AI Research, Tohoku University
April 2025 - Present

Develop automated speech scoring systems for English language learner speaking assessment.

AI Engineer Intern
Rakuten Group, AI for Business Department
August 2024 - September 2024

Develop practical applications incorporating AI technologies. My project focused on writing assistance for knowledge base article creation.

Research Intern
NEC Data Science Laboratory
August 2023 - October 2023

Research and development on natural language processing, machine learning, information retrieval and data engineering.

Teaching Assistant
Tohoku University
April 2023 - Present

Seminar on System Information Sciences, Spring 2025
Natural Language Processing, Fall 2024
Information and Data Literacy, Spring 2023

Research

International Conferences

Annotating Errors in English Learners' Written Language Production: Advancing Automated Written Feedback Systems. Steven Coyne, Diana Galvan-Sosa, Ryan Spring, Camélia Guerraoui, Michael Zock, Keisuke Sakaguchi, and Kentaro Inui. The 26th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, pp. -, July 2025.
Template-guided Grammatical Error Feedback Comment Generation. Steven Coyne. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Student Research Workshop, pp. 94-104, May 2023.
Links: Paper, Poster, Presentation

Domestic Conferences

Toward Pedagogically-Informed Automated Writing Feedback for Language Learners. Steven Coyne, Diana Galvan-Sosa, Camélia Guerraoui, Michael Zock, Ryan Spring, Keisuke Sakaguchi, Kentaro Inui. JALTCALL 2024 Poster Session, Nagoya, Japan. May 2024.
Links: Abstract, Poster
Large Language Models as Generalizable Text-to-Table Systems. Steven Coyne, Yuyang Dong. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Association for Natural Language Processing, Kobe, Japan. pp. 3243-3248, March 2024.
Links: Paper, Poster
Developing a Typology for Language Learning Feedback. Steven Coyne, Diana Galvan-Sosa, Keisuke Sakaguchi, Kentaro Inui. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Association for Natural Language Processing, Okinawa, Japan, pp. 2552-2557, March 2023.
Links: Paper, Poster
Towards grammatically-informed feedback comments. Diana Galvan-Sosa, Steven Coyne, Keisuke Sakaguchi, Kentaro Inui. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Association for Natural Language Processing, Okinawa, Japan, pp. 1339-1343, March 2023.
Links: Paper

Preprints

Analyzing the Performance of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in Grammatical Error Correction. Steven Coyne, Keisuke Sakaguchi, Diana Galvan-Sosa, Michael Zock, Kentaro Inui. arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.14342, May 2023.
Links: Paper

Activities

Reviewer

Journal: Natural Language Processing
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED): 2025
Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA): 2023, 2024, 2025
Workshop on Writing Aids at the Crossroads of AI, Cognitive Science and NLP (WRAICOGS): 2025