Reflection 7

On  the  relation  between  automated  essay  scoring  and modern  views  of  the  writing construct

By PAUL  DEANE

The article on automated essay scoring (AES) left the debate unsolved for me. I tried to identify the advantages and disadvantages of AES. On the one hand, it includes reliability, consistency, ease of scoring, less subjectivity, less bias, quick assessment. On the other hand, writing to a machine violates the essentially social nature of writing, reduces the validity of assessment, and ignores the communicative and cognitive perspectives of writing. According to the definition of writing construct, which serves the human communication purposes, the role of AES diminishes significantly as it cannot ensure validity. Another threat is that the use of AES might change the teachers’ instruction of writing and the learners’ perceptions and behaviors about writing competence – the system can be gamed.

I agree that AES can measure only certain aspects of writing, such as organization, vocabulary, grammar, mechanics, and style. But it cannot interpret meaning, infer communicative intent, evaluate factual correctness and quality of argumentation, or take the writing process into account. Nevertheless, whenever, I teach my students essay writing, I draw their attention to the communicative purpose of writing, quality of argumentation, and the writing process, as well.