Grading assignments is inherently subjective and time-consuming; automatic scoring tools can greatly reduce teacher workload and shorten the time needed for providing feedback to learners. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel method for automatically scoring student responses to picture-cued writing tasks. As a popular paradigm for…

In most universities in South Africa, English is still preferred as the medium of instruction. However, most schools in South Africa have adopted a home-language education approach. Those school students then have a lower English proficiency compared to other students from English schools. Providing these students with instructional assistance…

Automated scoring has the potential to dramatically reduce the time and costs associated with the assessment of complex skills such as writing, but its use must be validated against a variety of criteria for it to be accepted by test users and stakeholders. This study addresses two validity-related issues regarding the use of e-rater® with the…