Indiana First With Computerized Grading 524
Posted
by
michael
from the replaced-by-a-small-shell-script dept.
from the replaced-by-a-small-shell-script dept.
Mz6 writes "Computerized grading has been talked about previously, however, the New York Times reports that Indiana has become the first state to grade high school English essays by computer. The computerized grading process, called 'e-rater', uses a 6-point rating scale and uses artificial intelligence to 'mimic the grading process of human readers'. The system was tested over a 2-year pilot program and produced results virtually identical to those of trained readers. The big question is, will other states begin to emulate Indiana by tossing human grading?"
I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, because the way I read that is, "Produced lawsuits where the cost is virtually identical to about 20 times the short-term savings."
I see this coming from both sides. The obvious, the grading was wrong, and I lost a scholarship. To other people suing after dropping out of collage level english classes (the test said I was better than I was).
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:5, Funny)
At least the parent proves something... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:2)
I'm sure the computer can't tell sarcasm, or tell when a paper is a parody, or give extra points to a particularly good paper from a stupid student or take away points for a particularly bad paper from a brilliant student.
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:2, Insightful)
A "stupid" student doesn't deserve more points just for improving than a non-"stupid" student, and vice versa.
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why essays SHOULD be subjectively graded instead of objectively graded. You need to take into account the writing abilities of the student and determine if it's a good or a bad paper based on what they're capable of in addition to technical aspects of the paper.
Isn't this why there are remedial and accelerated english classes? To take into account the different levels of intelligence in students? If you took an 'A' paper from a remedial class, it's quite likely that it would be a 'D' in the accelerated class.
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why punish those with ability, why reward those who are not talented. Surely they won't be punished or rewarded in the same manner in real life. If the talented one was cruising and not expending any effort, thats his perogative. If he can be a productive member of society without effort thats fine, even if he has the potential to eb the next great mind, it's still his choice. The rewarding of those who work hard is important but if they work hard to only measure up to the minimium standard then they belong to that minimium standard regaurdless of how much effort they put in.
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on the purpose of gtrading... (Score:5, Insightful)
This issue cuts deep into the heart of what grading is for -- it's possible for smart people to reasonably disagree, depending on what they think the intent of the grade is. Since grades are put to many uses, there are many answers to the question.
As a college instructor, I tend to use a strict grading protocol -- and then "bump up" a few of the students. If someone comes in to my office every week and really struggles to understand the concepts, but the computer tells me that they earned a "C+" -- they're likely to find a "B-" on their transcript. But if someone who's smart enough to get an "A" blows an exam from being hung over, that person gets little or no sympathy.
Re:Depends on the purpose of gtrading... (Score:5, Insightful)
A grade is used to show how well you know a subject. If I knew a subject completely before starting the class & wrote the same level of paper as someone who studied his ass off, we deserve the same grade. He should not be given a better grade than me just because he waited for this particular class to learn a subject. Why am I judged differently because I took the initiative to learn the information earlier than I absolutely had to?
No, schools are not there to make you feel good about yourself (that's obvious), they are there to make sure you know the minimum information to pass a class. That'a a D. Then, if you know more, you get a better grade. The amount of work you put into it is irrelevant. In fact, if you put more work into it than you should have, it means you are not doing well, and once you get into the "real world," where you have strict deadlines, you don't have the option of getting paid more just because you worked harder for the same result. The exact OPPOSITE is true, in fact.
School should help people prepare for life. If someone is given a grade they did not deserve, they are being improperly trained how to work.
A problem, however, is with the PARENTS. Many students are C students, that's all there is to it. But they get all high & mighty towards the school if they see their child work very hard for a low grade. They figure their child isn't good enough if they don't have all As, but that they deserve them just for hard work.
If life had a payrate based on how hard you worked, vs. your productivity, I would start working as an astrophysicist. I wouldn't get anything done, since I know nothing about the work, but I would sure as hell work my ass off. Do you think anyone wants an employee like that?
(I mean the lack of knowledge -- everyone wants a hard worker, if they know enough).
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't grade subjectively because those grades will be compared objectively down the line. You can't say "this is pretty good for kevin, I'll give him an A", but then say "josh's paper is way better than kevin's paper, but josh is a bright kid, so I'm giving him a C". Kevin will think he's mastered the english language while Josh will go insane trying to achieve perfection.
Grading, when used for anything other than helping the teacher learn about each students, just plains sucks, and is only used for competition.
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I see as being problematic is kids learning to beat the system. Typically these systems are predicated on gramatical analysis (use of punctuation and sentence compeleteness) and evidence of citing the text the question is based off. I'd bet its a real easy system to beat.
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my tasks in the past was to push this type of software onto the local schools. We've used it for rating in class essays.
The idea is that everyone knows that the only way you get better writing is to write more and get some feedback on it. It doesn't matter if you are an educator throwing the papers back at the student or a computer algorithm. It all forces the student to find the mistakes and not make them the next time.
The problem isn't getting students to write more, its getting educators to grade more. There isn't enough hours in the day. So this is where this type of software comes into play -- you assign 2x the work you can normally handle, and let the computers handle half of it. You don't tell the students which assignments will be computer rated. Thus the students grades got better. Not much better, but they were better than the students not using the system in the same types of classes.
One of our smaller studies actually had us installing this software locally for instant feedback. It was a small percentage, but the students work was even better than before.
Yeah, you 'steal a copy' if you can't seem to get one given to you, and run it through until it likes it. How is this cheating or anyway underhanded. One of the better and far more dedicated educators I know actually allows students to hand in papers and have them marked up as many times as they want until the paper is due. His students final works are generally light years ahead of other educators in his facility that don't have the dedication (and for $26k a year, do you really want to give up your nights and weekends???).
Same thing here.
Shit, even using the grammar checker under work will force you to learn to write better (up to a point). You learn what its looking for and you avoid it. I'm not a good speller and I know the spell checkers help me learn after I hit the same error over and over again.
All these tools work for you in the learning process as long as you are willing to not just put this stuff on autopilot.
As for the title of this thread -- Lawsuit? The only lawsuits will come from idiots. None of the high stakes testing does purely computer rating. They all put humans into the equation. You will most likely get better rating because instead of having three or four humans look at your paper for 30 seconds each before moving on, you will now have one that is able to devote some serious time to it. All these humans will still be working just as many hours as before, but studies have shown that the eyeballs on the paper are there longer with this type of software than without (sorry, but these studies belong to the bigger testing companies or I'd post links...I just get paid to crunch the data).
Secondly, 5 years ago when I was working on this stuff full time, the software had a human agreeance of around 62% with a rater pool of 3 raters. Meaning that if you asked 3 people what they thought, took an average of this, and then asked a fourth, 62% of the time, the human agreed with the others. This was on a 12 point scale. The application, however, actually rated between 70 - 80% of the time depending on the model used.
In both cases, the raters were all trained together with the same things to look for, and the models were designed around this rater pool -- in a sense trying to simply guess at what the others would pick. The computer:human agreeance was higher than the human:human agreeance.
Back to the parent post, beating the system only means you beat learning to write.
BTW -- My post is not indicative of my writing skills outside of a conversational and informal setting, sans spell checker and proof re
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:3)
Yes, a computer has no bias. It also cannot comprehend what is written AT ALL. All it can do is process a few heuristics. This means that a child that's incapable of forming an intelligent thought will get rewarded for simply putting random words in a sentence structur
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:2)
A third source: TurnItIn.com-style relationships (Score:3, Interesting)
If it doesn't already, I would expect a service like this will eventually include plagiarism detection, due to marketing pressure if nothing else. This is something that human graders do, at least over the space of papers they grade and works they remember.
But if plagiarism detection is added, then the grading service would have to make and retain some encoding of each graded paper, a derivative work, in its database.
Once that happens, the grading service also becomes subject to all of the issues already
Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you? (Score:3)
OSS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OSS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OSS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, anything that would encourage students to re-write their papers and improve their writing would be pretty amazing. Most students jot something down, run a spell checker and turn in their work. If they could pre-grade their work, they might be better motivated to put out more effort and improve their writing.
Fortunately, when people graduate from high school and enter the workforce they become motivated to always make their best effort.
Re:OSS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OSS? (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is that they are talking only about things like this [gnu.org]. I used to use a similar program back when I was taking English classes, in order to bring my papers down to an 8th-grade reading level.
These are encredibly easy to mess around with. For example, the fog index is:
Fog Index = 0.4*(words/sentences+100*((words >= 3 syllables)/words))
Which is roughly equal to the school grade reading level required for the essay. If I remember correctly, Associated Press articles are written to a 4th-gra
Re:OSS? (Score:3, Interesting)
readability grades:
Kincaid: 6.4
ARI: 6.6
Coleman-Liau: 9.2
Flesch Index: 77.8
Fog Index: 8.5
Lix: 35.8 = school year 5
SMOG-Grading: 8.0
sentence info:
408 characters
96 words, average length 4.25 characters = 1.33 syllables
6 sentences, average length 16.0 words
50% (3) short sentences (at most 11 words)
33% (2) long sentences (at least 26 words)
3 paragraphs, average length 2.0 sentences
0% (0) questions
10
Re:OSS? (Score:5, Funny)
Now with Computerized Moderation the famous Slashdot message site can pre-emptively down-mod 'Redundant' posts long before they are actually 'Redundant.' The computerized modding process, called 'e-modder', uses a 6-point rating scale and uses artificial intelligence to 'mimic the modding process of human readers - including doing stupid shit like modding the first instance of a concept as Redundant'.
I would have loved this is a kid (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I would have loved this is a kid (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I would have loved this is a kid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I would have loved this is a kid (Score:3, Insightful)
It is also the exact environment of the modern workplace, as designed. Results are irrelevant. Only the process matters.
Re:I would have loved this is a kid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I would have loved this is a kid (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a baysian filter, it's Latent Semantic Analysis. LSA works by taking large amounts of text, and comparing the usage and application of the words within paragraphs. It learns very quickly what words mean, and the interesting thing is, that once it's trained far enough, it starts gaining more meaning to its words by where they're not, than by wh
I already want a copy of this. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I already want a copy of this. (Score:2)
Re:I already want a copy of this. (Score:5, Funny)
> I bet I could write the other side of the equation: a program to create nonsensical gibberish that always gets A's.
I'll bet half the people here thought this as soon as they read the headline. The normalRe:I already want a copy of this. (Score:4, Funny)
Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Some essays were graded out of a couple points. A paper out of 6 points carries less weight overall. If this is the only exam (ie AP tests) a 5/6 is looked at as a high score.
I don't see your point.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
When I was in school, I was glad to know whatever essay I was writing was being read by my teacher, whom I had real human student/teacher relationships with, and whom I could discuss whatever was or was
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
You had a different school experience than I did apparently. I felt that the human's reading my papers were distant, uninteresting, and less than worthy of grading someone else's work.
Generally co
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Your feedback was actual words!? In my day all we got was a scratch-n-sniff sticker and had to guess the meaning of getting a "watermelon" on our essay.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
A computer can obviously not grade essays fairly, so it shouldn't be done.
The article states that comparisons between the computer grading and human grading revealed nearly identical scoring. By this data, I don't think it's obvious that a computer can't be as fair as a human.
I got a 5/6, which, according to the computer, was extremely well. However, this was an 83%, which brought down my grade significantly. This computerized grading isn't fair at all.
What does the computer have to do with it? You
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, anyone who has read much literature knows that many great authors play with grammar, spelling, and form in non-standard ways in order convey a message. An automated system would grade them poorly, because only those who conform exactally to the rules get a good grade. Is our goal to turn all of our students into mindless automatons whose only goal is to churn out exactally the same drivell as the next guy?
They are not graded fairly, and they determine 10% of the final grade.
10% of the grade on the essay? Or in a particular class? 10% on the essay may actually be tolerable, because that means that at least a human actually read it to give the other 90% of the grade.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have any evidence or thought behind your statement that "A computer can obviously not grade essays fairly, so it shouldn't be done"? Why is that obvious? Is it obvious only because the grading of your essay was, in your opinion, not fair
I guess this rules out... (Score:2)
In unrelated news, Delicious Red Apples have suffered a terrible sales slump.
That's ok (Score:2, Funny)
This works better for the Slashdot crowd. They are much better at romancing computers than people to get what they want.
comment moderation (Score:5, Funny)
c'mon people i was only joking dont mod me down, not noooo!!
What about tricking the software? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about tricking the software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. The software can grade things like spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, but it won't grade the quality of the ideas expressed or the depth of understanding displayed. Therefore those latter dimensions will cease to be considered important, since grading them is expensive compared to the more mechanical stuff.
So much for those essays (Score:5, Funny)
Gaming the system (Score:5, Insightful)
The GMAT books are already giving formula essays to get you past any writers block that might happpen on the exam day...
Not the First (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the First (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not the First (Score:2)
Yeah... (Score:2)
Those Indianans are ruining us! (Score:5, Funny)
Even more efficient? (Score:2)
Trained readers... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this says more about the training that the "trained readers" are receiving than it does about the software.
Perfect scores every time (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1: Feed some encyclopedia articles, Wiki pages, and other random material on your subject into a Markoff chain generator.
Step 2: Use a genetic algorithm to generate variations of the text. Fitness is determined by the grade calculated.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 until desired grade is achieved. (And, of course, Profit!)
The result is totally worthless, but at first glance would probably appear legitimate even to a human reader.
Sort of like Slashdot posts.
We have computers to help grade assignments... (Score:2)
Content? (Score:2)
AI (Score:5, Funny)
e-Rater result? (Score:2, Funny)
Output: A+
identical results to those of trained readers... (Score:4, Interesting)
And the era of virtual teacher begins! (Score:2)
Seriously, how can a program replace a human when the program cannot comprehend structure like language? Computers cannot and should not replace English teachers or math teachers (well, beyond grade shool at least!). How can a computer program mark an English paper? How can a computer program check that a mathematical proof is correct? How can a computer program say that a particular train of thought is interesting, or pointless.
This is both good and bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't wait (Score:5, Funny)
For example:
Flimblarm nif goondatakun, jut sekfar bel shon duc. Seempkin dar goolnac flar tefnek voz toulian; elmpar gef sogquel.
Grade: B+ Your use of double-negatives continues to haunt you, but I'm glad you've gotten over hanging participles.
Copying (Score:2)
In Other News (Score:5, Interesting)
Indiana Director of State Board of Ed comments: "Isn't it wonderful how technology is improving education?"
I wanna try, I wanna try! (Score:2)
The word emission generally means sending something out. Because of this argument, Hauser is a city located in Kootenai County, Idaho. After Idaho, the Liberals formed the government in Alberta for the first 15 years of the province's existence.
Yeah, those were random snippets from the Wikipedia. Who knows? Maybe this technology [macdevcenter.com] got around?
Grade: A+++
This says more about "trained readers"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that there's anything in this post that serves as an example. I guess that's because I was graded by humans. Seriously, I don't recall getting any encouragement in writing back in the '70s in high school, and not much in college. I guess it wouldn't have been any worse if the Grade-O-Vac was inspecting my papers instead of my mostly-marginally-literate teachers. There were several exceptions, but they focused much more on reading than on writing. I suspect they had a lot greater effect that way--I know they had a great effect on me.
No way this is sound (Score:2)
As implemented, I'm sure there are easy ways to scam this system by writing gibberish. Who sold them this idea? I want to know the person responsible for this abuse of computing.
Re:No way this is sound (Score:3, Interesting)
Students (Score:2, Funny)
Can students get this program? (Score:5, Insightful)
India vs. Indiana (Score:5, Funny)
Standard Grading (Score:4, Funny)
So it gives its favorite students 'A's without reading, least favorite students 'F's, and the rest arbitrary grades somewhere in between to mimic a bell curve?
Excellent!
"Artificial Intelligence is easy. It's artificial stupidity that impresses me." -- Arthur Oscar
Missing feedback (Score:3, Interesting)
How do they judge the content? What if you submit an excellent paper on middle ages history but the assignment was on socialism?
Human feedback is required in order to learn how to write well, you can't just expect a machine to tell you how to improve your writing. Grammar perhaps, but not ideas and how to let them flow coherently.
In order for these students to get that feedback someone has to read it, and since they're reading it anyway, why not just grade it then?
Seems like they are trying to solve the wrong problem with this system, or a problem that dosen't exist. (Are there really so many papers to mark you need a machine to do it?)
Re:Missing feedback (Score:3, Interesting)
They can't. But on a standardized test, you don't get any feedback anyway.
"In order for these students to get that feedback someone has to read it, and since they're reading it anyway, why not just grade it then?"
Because it takes too long.
"Are there really so many papers to mark you need a machine to do it?"
Yes. Human graders for standardized tests get about 1-3 minutes per paper. Human graders don't h
Antidisestablishmentarianism! (Score:5, Funny)
If this works anything like the writing level indexes you find on word processors, it should be easy to fool.
Too Uniform (Score:3, Insightful)
My writing style is somewhat peculiar, though I can't exactly say how (or even approximately how). Partially as a result of this, my marks in English class over the years of high school ranged from C to A, depending not on me, but on who the teacher was. If the teacher happened to like my style, I got a good mark.
This is annoying, but at least each year there was a different teacher, who may like my style. If the marking is computerised, it will not change; if your writing doesn't fit what the computer likes, you're screwed; likewise, if it does like it, you might never learn to express yourself more creatively (ie you'll be punished for trying to write in a manner different from what you usually do).
There are possibilities in this technology, but I suspect that it will be a long while before the eccentric aren't labeled as poor writers.
Babelfish (Score:4, Funny)
To illustrate my point, I'll restate it. [English -> German -> English]:
I do not trust the computer, which arranges, until I see a computer-translated document of this laughable isn't.
That's about how well a computer "comprehends" language today.
Whoever approved this should be fired (Score:3, Insightful)
Essay grading is harder than science grading (Score:3, Interesting)
I say this because there is an objective criteria for grading the solution to a physics or math problem: correctness. For essays I do not beleive that we (and the current state of AI) can come up with an exact criteria like that. You might determine whether an essay is too different from essays which were written by experts, but cannot a very different essay to be just as good?
To my knowledge the AI programs can solve physics problems which are limited to some well defined domain (for example: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/cgi/isaacdem
I will accept an essay grading program after they grade solutions to math and physics problems.
I conjecture that some writers would feel offended if their essay did well according to the program: they might think it means they are too conformist and conservative and not novel in their approach...
Matyas
From the web site. (Score:4, Informative)
Submit "and" essay? I guess they haven't run the software on themselves.
F.
the triumph of mediocrity (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone procrastinating grading right now... (Score:5, Informative)
But I think that if a computer grading program which is no worse than humans could be devised, it would be a great learning tool. A lot of people make it to college as borderline illiterates. I'm not kidding. I read a lot of their crap. That's because their HS teachers were too overworked to grade their writing, so they didn't assign much. If a computer program could auto-grade and give detailed comments on how to improve the writing, high school students could be assigned an essay per week, and really get the hang of writing well. Teachers could focus on teaching instead of tedium.
Sure, the first grading applications are going to make a few serious errors. This is the first stage of every application when a computer is asked to interpret rich data. Early voice recognition sucked. Now it sucks much less, and it will just keep getting better. Same with OCR, chess software, machine translation, etc. So the right debate to have is about when this will be good enough for school use, and not whether. I'm prepared to admit that the answer to the right question is "not yet" (I'm sure how deep the current problems go), but I fully support working on this system until it works right.
Re:As someone procrastinating grading right now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the system described here doesn't return any such useful feedback. The Indiana system returns a grade from a six point scale. No comments, no criticism, no hint that the evaluation is meaningful.
Incidentally, what's this about "teaching instead of tedium"? Grading essays by evaluating construction, insight, and creativity should be part of the teaching process. Perhaps this is something that should be addressed earlier in the education of these students - if they're reaching college as "borderline illiterates" there is a problem - but grading in general is a part of teaching. If I were a student, I'd want to know that a human being - at some point - had bothered to look at the work that I did.
I took this test (Score:5, Informative)
I almost wimped out. I wrote about 80 percent of the essay (about influence of pop-culture on society - and silly me I always thought society influences pop-culture but anyway). I had 5 paragraphs - 1 intro, 3 body - 1 half-assed conclusion. I reoreded the paragraphs, copied the one I felt was the best written and pasted it into the body 3 times.
Guess what I got.....6/6 (six point grading scale which is pretty messed up because a 5/6 is an 83%). Hopefully they won't audit mine....
Re:I took this test (Score:3, Insightful)
I would estimate 90% of the essays given in the US educational system today are 5-paragraph essays.>br? Essentially, the 5 paragraph essay is a mold consisting of an introduction, 3 body paragraphs each focusing on one supporting fact, and a conclusion, and the teachers give students the ingredients in the form of a topic (definitely something that won't require too much thinking),and a style, The s
Computers can't grade "interesting"! (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, does your essay really grab the reader? Anyone here who reads technical documents knows what I'm talking about. There are some writers that, no matter how dull the subject, can make their work interesting and fun to read. A computer can not possibly grade one on that. I have a good friend who's a high school English teacher and occasionally I'll read some of the things written by his students. I've come across plenty of papers that are grammatically correct, have perfect spelling and are fairly well written from a syntactic and stylistic point of view, but are just plain boring to read. Then I'll move on to another paper, about the same subject, which is interesting and actually fun to read.
That's just one example of something a computer can not possible take into account when grading an essay. The bottom line is that a computer will never be able to grade you on certain subjective things, which although they are subjective and therefore open to a certain amount of interpretation depending on the person doing the grading, are nevertheless still very important aspects of good writing.
With spelling and grammar check, almost any average student can churn out a paper that is going to be mostly correct; however it still takes a good writer to produce something interesting. In my opinion, an interesting paper with a few minor spelling, grammar or syntactic errors is just as good as a boring paper with no spelling, grammar or syntactic errors.
How To Write An Essay (Score:5, Insightful)
It is essential that every paragraph begin with a topic sentence. The first paragraph should state the thesis, or point of the essay. Since computers cannot actually understand the entire essay, you can assume that it will only be judging the local coherence of writing which is free to run like a river, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, taking us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and environs.
The second paragraph should make a point that present a countervailing view, the antithesis. Once again, spelling should be correct, the essay should be capable of passing a Microsoft Word grammar check, but after that we pass through grass behind the bush where a gull calls, coming far, ending here. Finn again? Take, but softly memory till thousands are given the keys to a way a lone a last a loved a long the river runs.
The third paragraph should synthesize the material covered in the first two paragraphs. It is, however, important that any material obtained from external sources be modified so that it cannot be detected as an exact match for anything on the Web. So, she went into the garden to cut a lettuce leaf to make an mince pie; and at the same time a great wolverine, coming up the street, goes into the store. "What! No laundry detergent?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
In conclusion, the final paragraph should recapitulate and summarize what has gone before: since you can be sure that a computer is capable of counting paragraphs, a good essay always consists of five paragraphs. If it has the right number of paragraphs and every word is spelled correctly, you are almost certain to get at least a passing grade.
AP Essay Rubric (Score:3, Interesting)
A friend of mine who teaches Biology said that she saw some pretty bad essays which she would have given a poor grade to because the english was atrocious but she had to follow the grading rubric and give high scores to because the keywords were present.
I scored 5/5 on the AP English exam... (Score:3, Interesting)
I just signed up for a userid so I can take the exam online, but after submitting my info it said I may have to wait up to two days to get an account.
Curious that they can grade essays with a computer but it looks like they have to have a human pass out the user ids.
Anyway, I'll see if I can submit one of my articles to the exam, and will post here how I did. Since I have to wait for my user ID, you'll have to look back here later to see how I did.
Re:Google Bombing (Score:2, Funny)
Computerized grading is superb.
Computerized grading is excellent.
Computerized grading is outstanding.
Computerized grading is god.
Computerized grading is great.
Computerized grading is superb.
Computerized grading is excellent.
Computerized grading is outstanding.
Computerized grading is god.
Essay Result = A+
Re:Neat (Score:2)