• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.223-255
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• 2008

In this paper, we introduce an automatic system of scoring English essays. The system is comprised of three main components: a spelling checker, a grammar checker and a lexical cohesion checker. We have used such resources as WordNet, Link Grammar/parser and Roget's thesaurus for these components. The usefulness of an automatic scoring system depends on its reliability. To measure reliability, we compared the results of automatic scoring with those of manual scoring, on the basis of the Kappa statistics and the Multi-facet Rasch Model. The statistical data obtained from the comparison showed that the scoring system is as reliable as professional human graders. This system deals with textual units rather than sentential units and checks not only formal properties of a text but also its contents.