The feature set used with e-rater V.2 include measures of grammar, usage, mechanics, style, organization, development, lexical complexity, and prompt-specific vocabulary usage.
The diagnostic feedback is based on a suite of programs (writing analysis tools) that identify the essay’s discourse structure, recognize undesirable stylistic features, and evaluate and provide feedback on errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics.
The writing analysis tools identify five main types of grammar, usage, and mechanics errors – agreement errors, verb formation errors, wrong word use, missing punctuation, and typographical errors. The approach to detecting violations of general English grammar is corpus based and statistical, and can be explained as follows.
The system is trained on a large corpus of edited text, from which it extracts and counts sequences of adjacent word and part-of-speech pairs called bigrams. The system then searches student essays for bigrams that occur much less often than would be expected based on the corpus frequencies.
The writing analysis tools also highlight aspects of style that the writer may wish to revise, such as the use of passive sentences, as well as very long or very short sentences within the essay. Another feature of undesirable style that the system detects is the presence of overly repetitious words, a property of the essay that might affect its rating of overall quality (Burstein & Wolska, 2003).
Finally, the writing analysis tools provide feedback about discourse elements present or absent in the essay (Burstein, Marcu, and Knight, 2003). The discourse analysis approach is based on a linear representation of the text. It assumes the essay can be segmented into sequences of discourse elements, which include introductory material (to provide the context or set the stage), a thesis statement (to state the writer’s position in relation to the prompt), main ideas (to assert the author’s main message), supporting ideas (to provide evidence and support the claims in the main ideas, thesis, or conclusion), and a conclusion (to summarize the essay’s entire argument).
In order to identify the various discourse elements, the system was trained on a large corpus of human annotated essays (Burstein, Marcu, and Knight, 2003).
Below presents an example of an annotated essay.
A Student Essay With Annotated Discourse Elements
<Introductory Material>“You can’t always do what you want to do!,” my mother said. She scolded me for doing what I thought was best for me. It is very difficult to do something that I do not want to do.</Introductory Material> <Thesis>But now that I am mature enough to take responsibility for my actions, I understand that many times in our lives we have to do what we should do. However, making important decisions, like determining your goal for the future, should be something that you want to do and enjoy doing.</Thesis>
<Introductory Material>I’ve seen many successful people who are doctors, artists, teachers, designers, etc.</Introductory Material> <Main Point>In my opinion they were considered successful people because they were able to find what they enjoy doing and worked hard for it.</Main Point> <Irrelevant>It is easy to determine that he/she is successful, not because it’s what others think, but because he/she have succeed in what he/she wanted to do.</Irrelevant>
<Introductory Material>In Korea, where I grew up, many parents seem to push their children into being doctors, lawyers, engineer etc.</Introductory Material> <Main Point>Parents believe that their kids should become what they believe is right for them, but most kids have their own choice and often doesn’t choose the same career as their parent’s.</Main Point> <Support>I’ve seen a doctor who wasn’t happy at all with her job because she thought that becoming doctor is what she should do. That person later had to switch her job to what she really wanted to do since she was a little girl, which was teaching.</Support>
<Conclusion>Parents might know what’s best for their own children in daily base, but deciding a long term goal for them should be one’s own decision of what he/she likes to do and want to do
<Introductory Material>Which is a more ..?(The issue here is whether …. ) The speaker’s opinion is that (Repeat author’s opinion. To justify his claim, the speaker argues that … </Introductory Material><Thesis>In my view, however, (each of these alternatives is viable in certain circumstances/ In determining whether … , one must weigh … against…) On balance, <overall TS></Thesis> My view can be greatly substantiated by the following discussions.
<Main Point>On the one hand, there is no denying that <TS1: 正说Speaker’s opinion>…</Main Point> After all, <give a condition>….<Support: Reason>The reason I’m presenting here to support my view is that…… Without……, it is almost impossible that……<Support: Evidence>To illustrate, let us look at the example of…..(Both common sense and personal experience have told us that……) </Support> <Conclusion>Consequently, it is pretty obvious that…… Otherwise, …<TS1>…</Conclusion>
<Main Point>Futhermore,……<TS2: 反证Speaker’s opinion eg. If .. not true, then …> </Main Point><Support: Reason> The reason here is not far to seek…<Support: Evidence>A good example can be found in the case of … </Support> <Conclusion>Hence, all the evidence above demonstrates (beyond any doubt) that…<TS2>…</Conclusion>
<Main Point>On the other hand, I disagree with author that……</Main Point><Support: Reason> I would like to point out that the author overstates ……’s relative importance, and fails to consider other critical factors. <Support: evidence>For example, …. <Conclusion> Therefore, under this circumstance, it is obvious that …<TS3></Conclusion>
In conclusion, issue of <overall TS> has aroused much controversy. While in some cases, in many cases it will not. (while it appears paradoxical to recommend that, it is not) … (Although…, it…/while A…, B…) On the basis of my above discussion, I am quite confident to arrive at the conclusion that……
（红色是要自己添进去的，绿色是结构标示，只是作illustration purpose）
大家会发现，只要结构清楚，总分总，分的部分写三段，每段也是用总分总来写，中间夹着<support by reason><support by evidence/example>, 其实是很容易写到500多字的，尤其是有了example,你的内容会显得丰富了许多。
很多nn谈到转折连词的重要性，事实上，转折连词就是E rater那篇文章中所谓的Annotated Discourse Elements identifier，所以说，我们要尽量用这些identifier让E rater看出我们写得每句话的作用来，大家会发现，我中间每段最后一句话都是以标志性副词开头，而且各不相同，这就是为了降低由于repetition而导致到得分率低（Erater那篇文章有提到），所以能用这种标志性副词就多用，我的附件里面有很多此类标志性副词，短语，大家多多使用，当然也不是滥用，呵呵呵。
至于AA，结构模板就更为有用了，
开头结尾的模板是标准的，中间三段如何写，且待我我慢慢讲来
In this argument, the author concludes/recommends that… To justify his claim, the author assumes/reasons/points out that…Additionally, the author reasons that…Furthermore, the author also assumes that …Meanwhile, the author provides evidence that….Moreover, the author cites various other examples that…(cites the example of…)While the author’s argument has some merit, it suffers from several critical flaws.
To sum up, the arguer fails to validate the conclusion/recommendation that ….To bolster it, the arguer should provide more concrete evidence to demonstrate that…In addition, the arguer should have to rule out the above mentioned possibilities that would determine the arguer’s claim. Further more/Additionally, in order to access the argument, we still need more information concerning…(To better access the accuracy of the arguer’s recommendation, it would be useful to know…) in addition, to solidify the conclusion, the author should provide concrete evidence as well to demonstrate that …（TS）
（Start）<TS>. => (Rebuttal) (eg. However, this is not necessarily the case (Evidence) => For example(反例)=> Conclusion (eg. in fact, it is fallacious to draw any conclusion on the basis of such limited evidence)
======================
Start
1. Concede…The author (still) commits a fallacy of “After this, therefore because of this” in assuming that A is the cause of B.
2. The author’s solution rests/relies/depends on the assumption that A is the cause of B..
3. Another flaw that significantly undermines this argument is that the author neglects to indicate …(Another problem that seriously weakens the logic of this argument is that)
4. The conclusion unjustifiably relies on the poll while the validity of the survey itself is doubtful
5. The author unfairly assumes that…The author’s line of reasoning is that
6. The author has been engaged in “after this, therefore because of this” analysis in presuming that A is the sole cause behind B.
Rebuttal
1. It is absolutely/entirely possible that the other …
2. Common sense informs me that … such as… can hardly….
3. Actually, it is fallacious to reach any conclusion at all in the face of such limited evidence….
Conclusion
1. Lacking a more comprehensive analysis of the causes, it is presumptuous for the author to claim that A solely determined B/ attribute B to A.
2. Without more concrete information about…the author’s assumption that…is questionable
3. Because the author fails to account for other interpretations, the survey would be useless in concluding that…
4. … unless it can be shown that the sample is typical of all general group, the fact that … is groundless to claim that …
5. Without accounting for these potential factors, the author concludes too hastily that…is the best way to achieve goals
6. Without the comparison between K to other B, it is fallacious for the author to recommend that …
Paragraph structure identifiers.
First of all, first and foremost, to begin with, in the first/second/third/fourth place, the first and also the most glaring logic fallacy committed by the author is/
Even if I were to concede that/Even if it were the case that…, the author still commits a fallacy of….
Secondly, Furthermore,…Besides, Last but not least,
Replaceable verbs
Concludes that /reaches the conclusion that /advocates that /claims that /asserts that /alleges that
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发表于 2009-8-22 10:44:00
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