What you want to know is if your student has used the discourse model you taught in class. For example, when you teach beginners and intermediates, you don’t expect a native speaker’s level of writing just yet. But classroom teachers don’t focus on indicators of general proficiency in every assessment. Automated essay rating systems have been primarily focused on measurements of proficiency as a low-cost alternative to hiring additional expert teachers to score entrance exams (Monaghan & Bridgeman, 2005). What you may notice about the list above is that essay scoring can now start to provide feedback on achievement. As a source of formative feedback on early drafts, this kind of automated scoring will allow teachers to do what teachers do best: to dramatize the presence of an intelligent human reader and look for evidence of the mastery of the skills being taught in the lessons. Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errorsĪnd can do all of that in two seconds with detailed colour-coded comments and scores to indicate where revision is needed most.Check for a suggestion and a prediction.Check that you have paraphrased your thesis statement in your conclusion.Check your topic sentences to make sure they are short and to the point.Measure how debatable of your thesis is to see if it takes a strong stance.Count the number of literary analysis terms you have used in your thesis.Measure how much background information you have given to film you are discussing.Check to see if the first sentence is a question.Consider what the Virtual Writing Tutor’s Film-Analysis evaluation system can do. Nevertheless, the wish for a perfect timesaving solution to formative writing evaluation should not stand in the way of good pedagogy. As such, computers can be fooled by clever nonsense and will tend to give lower scores to brilliant non-conformist writing because it is eccentric (Monaghan & Bridgeman, 2005).ĭon’t make perfection the enemy of good pedagogy They do not construct a model of the world you describe in your essay as they read through it, looking for surface errors and taking measurements. Furthermore, computers have no imagination. Computers don’t think about the ideas in the essay they are scoring, they don’t know how much you have improved, and don’t care about how the feedback will make you feel (Miller, 2015). Despite the positive impact automated evaluation would have on writing instruction and teachers’ workload, ESL writing teachers may harbour doubts about the validity of feedback coming from a computer. Writing practice with a grammar focus is likely to be superior to fill-in-the-blank exercises because it can come with a communicative purpose for a specific target audience. By reducing the correction load by half, the teacher might be inclined to give a greater number of meaningful writing activities. If a computer could give effective formative feedback and scoring on the first draft of an essay, the teacher would only need to score their final draft. Meaningful practiceīecause of the usual impact of writing correction on a teacher’s workload, experienced teachers limit the number of writing assignments they set for their students. Consider this simple calculation:ġ0 minutes of feedback per essay x 30 students = 5 hours of correction If a computer could score every essay in two seconds without adding to the teacher’s workload, the time saved could be put toward providing higher-order feedback, helping the students in the group who are at risk of failing or just enjoying a correction-free weekend. ![]() Teachers spend a lot of time giving formative feedback on student writing, Often, correction time intrudes into teachers’ evenings and weekends leading to burnout and a shortage of qualified teachers, according to The Observer (Tapper, 2018). Teachers can now begin integrating free automated essay evaluations into their course plans.īut what should teachers make of automated essay scoring? First, let’s consider the benefits. One online grammar checker website now offers to evaluate academic essays, argument essays, and film-analysis essays in just two seconds and for free.
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