Feedback on Academic Essay Writing through pre-Emptive Hints: Moving Towards "Advice for Action"

This paper adopts an “advice for action” approach to feedback in educational practice: addressing how provision of “hints” to participants before they write academic essays can support their understanding and performance in essay-writing tasks. We explored differences in performance by type of hint, and whether there was a transfer of better performance in subsequent essays. Fifty participants were recruited, consisting of eight men and 42 women aged 18-80. Participants were assigned in rotation to four groups, and asked to write two essays. Groups 1 and 3 received hints before Essay 1, whilst Groups 2 and 4 received hints before Essay 2. Groups 1 and 2 received essential hints; Groups 3 and 4 received helpful hints. Essays were marked against set criteria. The results showed that an “advice for action” approach to essay-writing, in the form of hints, can significantly improve writers’ marks. Specifically higher marks were gained for the introduction, conclusion and use of evidence: critical components of “good” academic essays. As the hints given were content-free, this approach has the potential to instantly benefit tutors and students across subject domains and institutions and is informing the development of a technical system that can offer formative feedback as students draft essays

Using student experience as a model for designing an automatic feedback system for short essays

The SAFeSEA project (Supportive Automated Feedback for Short Essay Answers) aims to develop an automated feedback system to support university students as they write summative essays. Empirical studies carried out in the initial phase of the system’s development illuminated students’ approaches to and understandings of the essay-writing process. Findings from these studies suggested that, regardless of their experience of higher education, students consider essay-writing as: 1) a sequential set of activities, 2) a process that is enhanced through particular sources of support and 3) a skill that requires the development of personal strategies. Further data collected from tutors offered insight into the feedback and reflection stages of essay-writing. These perspectives offered a fundamental model of essay-writing and feedback to inform the ongoing, iterative development of this automated feedback system and indeed, for any institution developing tools to support students’ writing

Angol nyelvű összetett főnevek értelmezése parafrázisok segítségével

Az angol nyelvben gyakran használnak összetett főneveket, melyek jelentésének meghatározása számos számítógépes nyelvészeti probléma megoldásának fontos eleme. Egy olyan módszert mutatunk be cikkünkben, mely alkalmas két szóból álló angol nyelvű összetett főnevek értelmezésére parafrázisok segítségével, ahol parafrázisok alatt igéket és elöljárószavakat értünk. Ez a módszer először megfelelő parafrázisokat keres statikus korpuszokban, majd webes kereséseket alkalmaz a helytelen parafrázisok kiszűrésére. A módszerünk által visszaadott parafrázisokat angol anyanyelvű személyekkel értékeltettük ki. Az első, második, illetve harmadik helyen visszaadott parafrázisokra rendre átlagosan 3,1842, 2,7687, illetve 2,5583 pontot adtak az értékelők megfelelősségük alapján (1-től 5-ig terjedő skálán), ami véleményünk szerint biztató eredmény a feladat nehézségét figyelembe véve

Angol nyelvű összetett főnevek értelmezése parafrázisok segítségével

Az angol nyelvben gyakran használnak összetett főneveket, melyek jelentésének meghatározása számos számítógépes nyelvészeti probléma megoldásának fontos eleme. Egy olyan módszert mutatunk be cikkünkben, mely alkalmas két szóból álló angol nyelvű összetett főnevek értelmezésére parafrázisok segítségével, ahol parafrázisok alatt igéket és elöljárószavakat értünk. Ez a módszer először megfelelő parafrázisokat keres statikus korpuszokban, majd webes kereséseket alkalmaz a helytelen parafrázisok kiszűrésére. A módszerünk által visszaadott parafrázisokat angol anyanyelvű személyekkel értékeltettük ki. Az első, második, illetve harmadik helyen visszaadott parafrázisokra rendre átlagosan 3,1842, 2,7687, illetve 2,5583 pontot adtak az értékelők megfelelősségük alapján (1-től 5-ig terjedő skálán), ami véleményünk szerint biztató eredmény a feladat nehézségét figyelembe véve

Automatic Detection of Preposition Errors in Learner Writing

In this article, we present an approach to the automatic correction of preposition errors in L2 English. Our system, based on a maximum entropy classifier, achieves average precision of 42% and recall of 35% on this task. The discussion of results obtained on correct and incorrect data aims to establish what characteristics of L2 writing prove particularly problematic in this task

OpenEssayist: real-life testing of an automated feedback system for draft essay writing

OpenEssayist is unique in being an automated feedback system that has been developed to offer feedback on students' draft essays, rather than assessment on their finished work. This is therefore a system that offers opportunities for students to engage with and reflect on their work, and to improve their work through understanding of the requirements of academic essay writing. In trialling use of the system in a genuine Open University course, we found that students made use of it to varying degrees, which is perhaps likely with any study resource. Those who took the time to explore system affordances and what they could be used for however tended to report more positively on its perceived value. From our analysis we were also able to conclude that a significant positive correlation exists in this sample of students between marks on essay 1 and the number of drafts submitted. We could speculate as to what this may mean for this set of students, or more widely, but it seems clear that use of a system such as OpenEssayist has many potential advantages to students and tutors, which will benefit from further research and exploration

What types of essay feedback influence implementation: Structure alone or structure and content?

Students approach educational courses with varying levels of experience and understanding, and so need appropriate support to inform them of expectations and to guide their learning efforts. Feedback is critical in this process, so that learners can gauge how their performance aligns with expectations, and how they can improve their efforts and attainments. This study focused on the effects of providing different types of feedback on participants’ written essays, as well as on participants’ motivations for learning using measures of motivation and self-efficacy. In terms of research questions, it was important to ascertain whether participants performed differently in subsequent essays after receiving feedback on structure alone or on structure and content; whether their self-reported levels of motivation and attitudes to learning were related to essay performance; and whether the difference in type of feedback affected their self-reported levels of motivation and attitudes to learning. Findings revealed no significant difference in marks between those receiving feedback on structure alone and those receiving feedback on structure and content, which is surprising and deserves further exploration. Even so, using feedback to highlight certain structural elements of essay writing can have a lasting positive impact on participants’ future essay performance

OpenEssayist: extractive summarisation and formative assessment of free-text essays

OpenEssayist is a system which is currently under development. It aims to provide an effective automated interactive feedback system that yields an acceptable level of support for university students writing summative essays. The principal natural language processing technique currently employed is extractive summarisation using graph-based ranking algorithms. OpenEssayist will be piloted in September 2013 with Open University UK students following a Master’s course of study