• Educational Technology International
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.71-94
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• 2011

How can an automated essay scoring (AES) program, which provides feedback for essays, be a formative tool for improving ESL writing? In spite of the increasing demands for English writing proficiency, English writing instruction has not been effective for teaching and learning because of a lack of timely and accurate feedback. In this context, AES as a possible solution has been gaining the attention of educators and scholars in ESL/EFL writing education because it can provide consistent and prompt feedback for student writers. This experimental study examined the impact of different types of feedback for a college ESL writing program using the Criterion AES system. The results reveal the positive impact of AES in a college-level ESL course and differences between the teacher's feedback and the AES feedback. The findings suggest that AES can be effectively integrated into ESL writing instruction as a formative assessment tool.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.147-166
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• 2006

This study investigates the effect of misplacement in a written Computer-delivered ESL Placement Test (CEPT) context. The study aims to address the following two research questions: a) which scoring rubric features cause the misplacement of ESL learner's writing scores? and b) which scoring rubric features improve ESL learner's writing scores? Thirty-four international examinees took the test and participated in surveys at the University of Illinois. Twelve examinees of them attended the CEPT workshop test. In the workshop test, they carried out self-evaluation on their first essays using a scoring rubric and compared with expert raters' results. After the workshop, the examinees responded to a survey and interview. For the first research question, the results of the survey and interview addressed that the majority disagreed with the raters' rating results. The self-evaluation results also indicated that their misunderstanding of organization feature caused the misplacement. For the second question, the CEPT workshop scores were improved due to the score improvement in the organization feature while the contribution of other features to the total scores was little. Most of the examinees pointed out that a lesson on the scoring rubric enhanced their understanding of the writing features of the rubric so that their placement scores were generally improved.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.123-142
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• 2009

The present study used multi-faceted Rasch measurement to explore the characteristics and bias patterns of non-native raters when they scored L2 writing tasks. Three raters scored 254 writing tasks written by Korean university students on two topics adapted from the TOEFL Test of Written English (TWE). The written products were assessed using a five-category rating scale (Content, Organization, Language in Use, Grammar, and Mechanics). The raters only showed a difference in severity with regard to rating categories but not in task types. Overall, the raters scored Grammar most harshly and Organization most leniently. The results also indicated several bias patterns of ratings with regard to the rating categories and task types. In rater-task bias interactions, each rater showed recurring bias patterns in their rating between two writing tasks. Analysis of rater-category bias interaction showed that the three raters revealed biased patterns across all the rating categories though they were relatively consistent in their rating. The study has implications for the importance of rater training and task selection in L2 writing assessment.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.1-17
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the literary approach using a game strategy on young children's phonological awareness and writing abilities. The subjects were selected from two classes of 'H' and 'M' Kindergarten in G city. The research tools used were the Phonological Awareness Ability Test, which was corrected by Jo, Kim, and Jeong(2006) and used to measure young children's phonological awareness abilities, and Lindberg(1987)'s Kindergarten Writing Assessment which was adapted and used by Noh(1994) in order to assess writing abilities. The literary approach activity using a game strategy used in this study resulted in an improvement in young children's phonological awareness abilities and writing abilities. These results suggest that these activities are valuable tools and can be applied successfully in the childhood education field as teaching aids.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.65-70
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• 2009

This paper describes ongoing work on the correction of adverb errors committed by Korean learners studying English as a foreign language (EFL), using an automated English writing assessment system. Adverb errors are commonly found in learners 'writings, but handling those errors rarely draws an attention in natural language processing due to complicated characteristics of adverb. To correctly detect the errors, adverbs are classified according to their grammatical functions, meanings and positions within a sentence. Adverb errors are collected from learners' sentences, and classified into five categories adopting a traditional error analysis. The error classification in conjunction with the adverb categorization is implemented into a set of mal-rules which automatically identifies the errors. When an error is detected, the system corrects the error and suggests error specific feedback. The feedback includes the types of errors, a corrected string of the error and a brief description of the error. This attempt suggests how to improve adverb error correction method as well as to provide richer diagnostic feedback to the learners.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.3 no.9
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• pp.381-388
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• 2014

In this paper, we deal with implementation issues of an unknown word classifier for middle-school level English writing test. We define the type of unknown words occurred in English text and discuss the detection process for unknown words. Also, we define the type of swear words occurred in students's English writings, and suggest how to handle this type of words. We implement an unknown word classifier with a swear detection module for developing an automatic English writing scoring system. By experiments with actual test data, we evaluate the accuracy of the unknown word classifier as well as the swear detection module.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.293-324
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to identify differences in the report assessment patterns of international undergraduate students and instructors. Based on two sample reports, the following differences were confirmed between international students and instructors' assessments of reports. First, instructors and students showed no differences in their assessments of the well-formatted report. However, the two groups exhibited differences in their assessments of the report that was not well formatted in that students evaluated the report more highly than instructors did. Second, instructors and students exhibited notable differences in their assessments of items such as citation, logic, and expression. This may have been because students lacked knowledge on citation methods and the use of grounds for arguments based on citation methods and topics. Third, students and instructors showed differences in their areas of focus when evaluating reports. Instructors mostly focused on the main topics of each report, whereas students focused on supporting details for the main topics. Based on these findings, instructors need to emphasize the following areas in educating international undergraduate students on report writing. First, they should stress proper source citation. They should provide frequent guidance on how to accurately cite sources. Second, they should help students to first think about the overall form and content of their reports. Instructors should emphasize that having a logical overall report structure and content that is relevant to the subject is more important in general than grammar or accuracy of vocabulary.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.131-154
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of essay writing-centered mathematics instruction on problem solving and mathematical deposition in the elementary school. For the present study, two 6th grade classes with equivalent achievement in terms of problem solving and mathematical disposition based on the pretest. A total of 15 mathematics lessons focused on writing activities were administered to the experiment group for two months, while the textbook-based traditional lessons were given to the comparison group. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyze the data. The results of the present study showed that essay writing-centered mathematics teaching is statistically superior that the textbook-based mathematics teaching with respect to students' problem solving and mathematical disposition. In addition, it was evidenced that essay writing-centered mathematics instruction makes an influence on students' perceptions toward essay-based assessment in a positive way.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.347-360
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• 2016

This study focused on the use of student assessment activities to investigate the impact on reflective thinking in Argument-based Inquiry. The participants of the study were 166 10th grade students (six classes). Over one semester, students participated in five ABI programs that we developed. The experimental group (84 students) was taught Argument-Based Inquiry with students' self and peer assessment activities. The comparative group (82 students) was taught without the activities. We analyzed students' reflective writing to investigate how the student assessment activities influenced the students' reflective thinking. We also used the interviews and surveys to examine the validity of student assessment activities. According to analysis of the reflective writing, the experimental group had a significantly higher mean score than the comparative group in the 3rd and 5th writing. The ratio of students who showed a metacognitive level of reflection with regard to analysis of inquiry process, understanding of learning, and change of thinking increased in both groups, but the experimental group's ratio was higher than the comparative group's. The result of analysis of the reflective practice showed that the ratio of the experimental group's students who reached the metacognitive level of reflection in their writing increased, while the comparative group's decreased. Therefore, we conclude that student assessment activities can create a learning environment that facilitates student participation, increases the students' engagement in the learning process, and can be used as a tool to scaffold learning.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.371-378
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• 2007

Since 2001, we have taught computer in elementary school to become the advanced country of IT in the 21C. However, people criticized that ICT education which is consisted mainly of the computer skills is not appropriate for information literacy education. In 2005, "ICT Education Guide Rev." is published. Thereafter, information literacy education has systematic frame. The experts emphasize the importance of performance assessment. Computer education can become the problem solving education if the performance assessment carried out. However, it is not successful without the good rubrics for performance assessment In this paper, we developed the rubrics for performance assessment for "presentation document writing".