Background

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background

In recent years, with the advances of the Internet and the growing tendency of English as a global language, there is a growing need to write well in English in order to communicate with people in different countries and in different settings. English learners are eager to master the skills of writing so that they can be better prepared for the numerous occasions in which they need to write in English. For high school students in Taiwan, English composition in particular has a more dominant role in the process of English learning, for students have to take the college entrance exams in which a more than 120-word English composition is required. In addition to memorizing a large amount of vocabulary, numerous idioms and phrases, or having translation practices, high school students expect to have more writing practices in their English class. To respond to students’ requests, most teachers assign students as many writing topics as possible in the belief that more practices will help polish students’ writing skills and make students better writers. In a typical composition class in high school, students write for an assigned topic within a limited amount of time, and the teacher collects their works for grading. A few days or weeks later, students receive their compositions with a grade, numerous red-ink marks indicating their errors and a few words or lines of feedback from the teacher. Since there is only limited time in class, students rarely have the chance to revise, and they will be asked to write for a new topic in the next class. In most cases, teachers serve as the only source for correction and feedback. While providing students with feedback on error correction remains an issue under debate (Truscott, 1996, 1999; Ferris, 1999, 2004), it is generally believed that feedback enables students to discover the weaknesses in their works and thus help them improve the quality of their writing. However, with

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more than 40 students in a class, marking students’ works and giving proper feedback becomes a tiring, time-consuming burden for most language teachers. They may in turn reduce the frequency of giving students assignments, which contradicts the idea of having more practices on writing. Revisions and multiple drafts seem nearly impossible. Therefore, pursuing a more efficient way to grade students’ works and give feedback has become a goal for many language teachers.

With the rise of CALL technology in classroom, there seems to be an alternative way which can relieve teachers from their heavy workload –automated writing evaluation (AWE) programs. Originally developed by universities and some corporations in the U.S. for large-scale high-stake assessments, some of the programs are now available for the schools to aid writing instructions, also in ESL and EFL context. These programs utilize various techniques such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) skills or Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simulate how teachers and human raters grade students’ works (Burstein et al., 2003; Elliot, 2003). These systems provide instant scores and some even with detailed feedback for students to improve their writing. Boasting immediacy and the high correlations with the scores of human raters (Burstein et al., 2003; Elliot, 2003), automatic essay scoring seems to be a promising solution to language teachers’ heavy workload.

Though a relatively new research field, with numerous attempts made to perfect the techniques, AWE has been adopted in some of the large scale assessments, such as Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOFEL) and Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), in which students’ score is determined by a human rater and e-rater at the same time. Online programs incorporating the computerized scoring mechanism and feedback functions are also available, two of the better-known are My

Access!, developed by Vantage Learning, and Criterion, an automated evaluation

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only provide students with a score, but instant feedback on grammar, style, and word usages; in addition, some advice on content and organization are also given (Burstein et al., 2003; Vantage Learning, 2003). Then learners can revise their works based on the suggestions they receive from the software.

Through intense advertising and marketing strategies, these systems are implemented in the K-12 environment and the college settings in the U.S. and now some universities outside the U.S. are trying to incorporating AWE into their writing classes. There has been some research regarding the validity of these AWE programs conducted by the companies. They claim a high correlation between the computer and human readers, and propose that AWE should be viewed as a supplement to facilitate the writing instructions rather than replacement of teachers (Vantage,2003; Burstein, 2003).

Research concerning students’ perceptions toward the software has also been carried out. The results show that students are impressed with the immediacy but feel unsatisfied with the “too general” feedback (Yang, 2004; Chen& Cheng, 2006). Most of the previous studies concerning AWE focus on the validity of systems or students’

perceptions of the software, but research on the comparison and analysis of the computer-generated feedback quality is relatively few. In the present study, the researcher will use a new AWE program as the instrument to grade students’

compositions, and then compare the results with those of human raters to see whether there are strengths or limitations in the computerized feedback mechanism. With the advancing technology, the researcher believes that it may be a plus for language teachers to make use of the available tools and resources to facilitate students’

learning and also, to make the grading process a less painful one.

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