Automated Chinese Essay Scoring Based on Multilevel Linguistic Features

Writing assessments make up an important part of the learning process as one masters the important linguistic skill of writing. However, this process has not been implemented effectively or on a large scale because the task of essay scoring is very time-consuming. The solution to this problem is AES, where machines are used to automatically score essays. In fact, the application of AES to English learning has been successful. Due to differences in linguistic characteristics, a redesign is needed before AES can be applied to Chinese learning. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce ACES, an automated system for scoring Chinese essays, and explain the basic framework, design principles, and scoring accuracy of the system. Unlike some end-to-end AES systems, ACES’ basic framework is designed to provide more interpretative features. The experimental results show that the performance of the ACES system is stable and reliable, and on par with other commercial English AES systems.