Beyond the Design of Automated Writing Evaluation: Pedagogical Practices and Perceived Learning Effectiveness in EFL Writing Classes (English As a Foreign Language) (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Automated writing evaluation (AWE), also referred to as automated essay scoring (AES) (1), is not a brand-new technology in the twenty-first century; rather, it has been under development since the 1960s. This technology was originally designed to reduce the heavy load of grading a large number of student essays and to save time in the grading process. Early AWE programs, such as Project Essay Grade, employed simple style analyses of surface linguistic features of a text to evaluate writing quality (Page, 2003). Since the mid-1990s, the design of AWE programs has been improving rapidly due to the advance of artificial intelligence technology, in particular natural language processing and intelligent language tutoring systems. Newly developed AWE programs, such as Criterion with the essay scoring engine "e-rater" by Educational Testing Service and MYAccess! with the essay scoring engine "Intellimetric" by Vantage Learning, boast the ability to conduct more sophisticated analyses including lexical complexity, syntactic variety, discourse structures, grammatical usage, word choice, and content development. They provide immediate scores along with diagnostic feedback in various aspects of writing and can be used for both formative and summative assessment purposes. In addition, a number of AWE programs are now web-based and equipped with a variety of online writing resources (e.g., thesauri and word banks) and editing features (e.g., grammar, spelling, and style checkers), which make them not only an essay assessment tool but also a writing assistance tool. Students can make use of both AWE's assessment and assistance functions to help them write and revise their essays in a self-regulated learning environment.