Tutor vs. Automatic Focused Feedback and Grading of Student ESP Compositions in an Online Learning Environment
This article discusses the affordances and limitations of an automatic text evaluator in the context of the online teaching/learning of composition writing skills within a specialised linguistic domain, namely, English for Tourism. The system, named G-Rubric, was designed and built by an interdiscip...
| Authors: | , |
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| Format: | article |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia |
| Repository: | e-spacio. Repositorio Institucional de la UNED |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:e-spacio.uned.es:20.500.14468/29724 |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/29724 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | 5505.10 Filología Focused Feedback Automatic Feedback ESP LSP Writing Online Learning Data-Driven Learning |
| Summary: | This article discusses the affordances and limitations of an automatic text evaluator in the context of the online teaching/learning of composition writing skills within a specialised linguistic domain, namely, English for Tourism. The system, named G-Rubric, was designed and built by an interdisciplinary team of linguists, psychologists, educationalists, and computer engineers to explore the applicability of data-driven language learning in education, for which it subsequently obtained several awards and distinctions. This article describes the adaptation process of G-Rubric to English for Tourism, contextualized in a distance learning university degree, and analyses its potential to substitute or complement frontline tutors in the task of revising and assessing student compositions. Two types of textual evaluation are provided by G-Rubric: numerical grading and focused feedback on form (writing) and function (content). Content evaluation is based on pattern-matching and machine reasoning against a specialised corpus and associated knowledge previously inserted in the tool as appropriate. The article compares the performance of both tutors and system and proposes specific lines of research to gain insights into their optimal integration. |
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