Evaluation of text coherence for electronic essay scoring systems

Evaluation of text coherence for electronic essay scoring systems

Existing software systems for automated essay scoring can provide NLP researchers with opportunities to test certain theoretical hypotheses, including some derived from Centering Theory. In this study we employ the Educational Testing Service’s e-rater essay scoring system to examine whether local discourse coherence, as defined by a measure of Centering Theory’s Rough-Shift transitions, might ...

A New Model for Text Coherence Evaluation using Statistical Characteristics

Automated Essay Scoring for Swedish

We present the first system developed for automated grading of high school essays written in Swedish. The system uses standard text quality indicators and is able to compare vocabulary and grammar to large reference corpora of blog posts and newspaper articles. The system is evaluated on a corpus of 1 702 essays, each graded independently by the student’s own teacher and also in a blind re-grad...

Automatic Essay Scoring

Standardized tests are hampered by the manual effort required to score student-written essays. In this paper, we show how linear regression can be used to automatically grade essays on standardized tests. We combine simple, shallow features of the essays, such as character length and word length, with part-of-speech patterns. Our combined model gives significant reduction in prediction error. W...

Beyond Automated Essay Scoring

The ability to communicate in natural language has long been considered a defining characteristic of human intelligence. Furthermore, we hold our ability to express ideas in writing as a pinnacle of this uniquely human language facility—it defies formulaic or algorithmic specification. So it comes as no surprise that attempts to devise computer programs that evaluate writing are often met with ...