Hi-Line Blog: Essay Robot Threatens Creativity In Writing

Rhydian Talbot/Staff Writer

The e-rater scoring engine would have no qualms analyzing and grading this sentence. But this one? Most definitely.

Striving for unbiased efficiency and time management, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is fine-tuning an essay-grading computer program that analytically scores writing samples, the writing equivalent to the multiple-choice test Scantron evaluator.

Providing feedback about writing characteristics like grammar, usage, style and organization, e-rater statistically produces a final score estimate between one and six based on the proportion of each inputted feature. It scopes out run-on sentences, attacks errors in subject-verb agreement, assaults flawed prepositional usage and mauls inappropriate usage of punctuation. Depending on the model, it may also generate an “advisory message” should an essay dare derivate from the others graded against it.

E-rater prefers quantity over quality. Lacking comprehension skills, a 716-word essay wrought with nonsensical sentences (“the pineapple lacked shirt sleeves”) received a six; a strongly worded argument consisting of 524 words received a five. It also appreciates connecting words like “however.” However, it disdains brevity. And sentences that begin with “and.” Sentence fragments, too.

Short paragraphs don’t emphasize points, it reasons, but detract.

Formulas and proportions and statistical derivations — when did expression develop algorithms?

E-rater’s call for consistency errs on the Orwellian, taking something so uniquely wild as language and leashing it to a sterile facsimile of its purpose. Electronic grids and metal cogs can’t analyze humor or detect wit drier than their ungreased joints, can’t incorporate soul and drive into a calculation. Assessing perfection in an imperfect medium creates a maddening oxymoron (a form of figurative language that, ironically, the system can’t compute). 

Implementing a program dependent on specificity and like-mindedness shapes student writing towards said specificity, creating like-minded writers and like-minded thinkers. Grade to the machine and its taste for the tasteless, and entire classrooms will churn out writers proficient in technicality but inept in originality.