Opinionation, Vagueness, and Specificity-Distinctions: Essay Traits Measured by Computer

Abstract

Three characteristics of writing quality were selected for study from among the many discussed in English texts on the assumption that single words or discrete phrases reliably cue the presence of such characteristics in essays. A set of 256 graded essays was searched by computer for cues, and the measures thus obtained were correlated with the essay grades. All predicted correlations were significant at p < .o0. A short while ago, the attempt to grade essays by computer seemed to many psychologists to be distinctly premature. Little was known of the cognitive processes of essay graders; objective, catalogued facts of student essay characteristics especially influential among graders were seemingly too few and too impotent to engender optimism. But most discouraging was the absence of any well defined theory for evaluating writing quality by computer. How could a computer program evaluate a student composition if it didn't know what was being said, and if it couldn't begin to discriminate subtleties of style? Indeed, the initial attempt to