Statistical and Linguistic Strategies in the Computer Grading of Essays

Essay tests are used in the schools and colleges of all nations, and in major testing programs of national and eveh international size. Potentially, such essay tests are an important applied field for computational linguistics, and.should eventually provide focus for much work. Yet in the past, little direct attention has been paid to such grading, although there are ways to begin investigation which would not necessarily require much linguistic knowledge beyond that now available.